


Sorrows Undone

by sunalso



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grumpy Leo Fitz, Halo - Freeform, Late 90s/Early 00s pop songs, Maveth - Freeform, No Will to be found anywhere, Non-Explicit Sex, lost on Maveth Jemma Simmons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-09-27 14:56:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20409640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunalso/pseuds/sunalso
Summary: AU. Fitz never met Jemma and never went into the field. He couldn't have, because ten years ago, when Fitz was a new cadet at the Academy, Jemma had been recruited into a top-secret NASA mission to another planet. She's been stranded on the far side of the monolith by herself ever since.  That's all about to change when Mack recommends Fitz to director Coulson as the engineer for a team tasked with investigating a strange black rock.Beta'd by Gort





	1. Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [8766 Hours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7787458) by [AGL03](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGL03/pseuds/AGL03). 

The fridge light was burned out.

Fitz sighed and grabbed a beer anyway. He’d fix it later. He’d been fixing things all day as it was, in his tiny cramped lab that was officially a “satellite” of the NYC SHIELD office but was really a repurposed storage room in a warehouse where Fitz had been exiled to after have one too many tiffs with his boss.

The gormless twit would never listen. Or any of the other mouth-breathers who were Fitz’s so called-co-workers. They just didn’t think fast enough. It was exhausting. Arguing with them was like arguing with a brick wall. At least you could punch a brick wall.

After an epic blowout over funding, which Fitz had needed to make a prototype of a gun that could potentially incapacitate people without killing them—it wasn’t his fault no one could come up with a formula to put in the cartridges—Fitz had been sent packing to what might as well be the Moon. The warehouse had terrible wi-fi, and there was never enough light, but it had the advantage of no one ever walking in and bothering him.

Fitz flopped down on his couch and powered on his Xbox. He mostly did repair and upgrades on equipment that agents broke in the field. There was an endless stream of malfunctioning gadgets, but he only made them function as they should. Fitz refused to add anything until he was allowed money for testing. He did have his own project, a set of drones with forensic capabilities. The two prototypes he had were cobbled together, but they worked. More or less. He needed someone with expertise outside his field to help with the sensors.

He clicked over to the most recent Halo game and made a face, trying to decide if he wanted to start another run-through of the campaign, or play multi-player. A notification popped up, inviting him to an online party. Multi-player it was. He accepted the invite and slid his headset on.

“Hello, hello,” he said.

“Hey, Turbo.” Mack’s voice was loud and clear. Mack was another engineer employed by SHIELD, Fitz had met him when working on a large project just after graduating from the Academy. Mack was easygoing and had more or less adopted Fitz for the duration of the project, making the time spent working on it much less exasperating than it otherwise would have been. They still played online games together every week or two, and Fitz was certain the secret to their friendship was that they didn’t work out of the same office. Mack was at some top-secret facility, and Fitz sometimes envied how in the middle of it all he seemed.

“What are you doing online on a Friday night?” Fitz asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you the same thing? Whatever happened to that one girl? I thought you were going to ask her out.”

Fitz sighed dramatically.

“That bad?”

“That bad.” Fitz had been making eyes at Marie for weeks, she had long black hair and soulful eyes, and was a very bright physicist. Every time he had to be in the office to update his boss or fetch a piece of equipment or deliver a completed repair, Marie would be smiling at him. “Turns out she’s just nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently, she smiles at everyone. Yesterday, I got introduced to her brand new six-foot-two operative boyfriend with a buzzcut. Ricardo can bench press more than I weigh. She was very excited about that.”

Mack chuckled. “Plenty of fish in the sea, you don’t need her.”

“I haven’t tried the sea,” Fitz grumbled as he made a headshot with a sniper rifle.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think the woman for me is on this planet.”

“I don’t know, Turbo. I really don’t know. What are you looking for?”

Fitz got taken out by a camper and cursed under his breath as he waited for a respawn. “Shorter than me.”

Mack laughed. “That’s it?”

“She has to be smart. Brilliant. I want to be able to talk to her and not leave her behind. I want her to know things I don’t and have strong opinions. Someone I can have endless conversations with.”

“Yeah,” Mack said softly. The match ended, they’d lost, though Fitz had most kills on his team. There was a wait as the game loaded the next round. When it started up again, Mack sighed. “Go crazy, what would this ideal woman look like?”

Fitz snorted. “If you’re asking me what I like to wank to, I don’t think you’re that kind of friend.”

“Please send me your nerdy porn recs.”

“I like big brains and I cannot lie.”

Mack laughed hard enough Fitz was worried he was going to break a rib. Honestly, Fitz didn't think he was that bad of a singer. “Okay, man, okay," Mack said. "I’m just trying to figure out what you like. SHIELD has to employ some scientist you’d get along with.”

“Oh, sure, but how are you going to figure it out? Have they started asking if new hires will put up working with me?”

“They should. You’re wasting away stuck in that hell hole.”

Fitz grunted as he rapidly took out the two enemies guarding an objective. “I agree.”

“Since I’m doing nothing better tonight than sitting here, playing a game and chatting with a friend. Tell me.” Mack could be damned stubborn when he wanted to be.

“Fine. Brunette. Looks nice in a low-cut shirt.”

“Ah, you’re a boob man.”

“Thank you for being crass. Yes, I appreciate a decent set of tits.” He’d given up questioning why he found that part of a woman the most intriguing, but he’d cobbled together quite the collection of videos off the internet of that confirmed Mack’s statement. Fitz shot an enemy to protect Mack’s back.

“Okay, you need a short, brunette genius with a good rack.”

“Yeah, if you could run down to the girlfriend mart and pick me up one, I’d appreciate it. Oh, and don’t forget the most important part, she has to be able to stand me.”

“In all seriousness, Fitz, you’re going to find somebody. Some girl is going to think you’re hot stuff and want to chat nerdy with you forever and ever.”

Fitz shook his head. “I wish I had your optimism. At least I have you as my mate. You’re alright.”

“You’re alright too. And trust me, there’s a girl out there dreaming about you right now.”

****

Jemma wiggled her toes as she woke up. Another day in paradise.

She tried to hang onto the threads of her dream. It was the only time she saw other humans. In this one, she was fairly certain she’d been kissing someone.

That’d be nice.

But the dream faded, and there was no use pretending she was anywhere other than in a cave on Maveth. Like every morning, she did her best to be excited to be the only human to reside on another planet.

Ten years she’d been surviving and recording everything she could. Temperature, weather, the positions of the stars. Whether or not the planet's minimal fauna had left any tracks near her home.

She ate reconstituted eggs and canned pears, washing the dishes and utensils and putting them away in the area that served as her kitchen. The cave was dry, the floor sandy, and over the years she’d made it into a comfortable place to live. She had shelves, a cot, bag style chairs made out of clothes she’d worn out and sewed together. Jemma kept the place clean and tidy, determined not to let being on her own deter her from keeping a nice home.

Her mother would be so proud.

Jemma, dressed in her only outfit of cut off jean shorts and a threadbare, armless button-up that was missing most of its buttons, climbed out of her home and slipped through the narrow rock entrance that kept her safe.

There were no prints from the bugs, Maveth’s main inhabitants. They were a non-intelligent species that preyed on everything that moved, including each other. This time of year, there usually weren’t many in the area, but that was no guarantee. She was still alive because she respected rules like always checking for predators.

The coast clear, she assessed her solar panels to make sure they were free of dust and noted wind speed and direction. It was a still day, which was also not surprising for the time of year.

Though what constituted a year was not an exact measurement. She had a rough idea of Maveth’s size, judging from horizon curvature, and it wasn't that different than Earth. Which was good because it meant gravity was not an issue.

Completing her daily chores, she returned to her home, recorded her observations, and curled up with one of the battered books in her possession. _Moby Dick_ was a long read if nothing else. She read out loud, needing to hear a voice, even if it was only her own.

_Call me Ishmael._

****

Fitz stretched and put his hands on his hips. It’d been a long Monday.

The baton he was working on wasn't functioning remotely correctly. What the bleeding hell had the agent it belonged to been doing?

His mobile rang, and he picked it up. “Fitz.”

“Hello Fitz, this is Director Coulson.”

Fitz pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the number but of course it was blocked. Why would SHIELD’s director be calling him? He didn’t think he’d fucked up that badly any time recently.

“Are you there?” the person on the other end asked.

Fitz nearly fumbled the mobile before getting back to his ear. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

“Wonderful. Pack up your things. I have something that needs an engineer.”

“Uh, wh-what thing?”

The Director chuckled. “I can’t tell you that, but your friend Mack assures me that you’re the man for this job. There’s a helicopter landing in about two minutes for you. See you soon.” The line went dead.

Two minutes?

Fitz rushed around, stowing what he had to and carefully locking the lab up.

He made it outside just in time to see a large helicopter settle onto the middle of the street. Mack opened the side door and waved him over.

“Hey, Turbo!” Mack said as Fitz climbed into the bird.

Once he had a set of handphones on, he was able to respond. “What the hell is going on?” His stomach lurched as the helicopter took off and the city grew smaller below them.

“SHIELDs been a mess since the Hydra fiasco,” Mack said, which Fitz knew. His department had been too unimportant for Hydra even to bother infiltrating. Which was depressing, though he was very thankful not to have been shot or mind-wiped. “The Director is still finding out about a lot of stuff that was hidden away. Including something we can’t even tell what it is or does. We needed an engineer on the team studying it. I recommended you. We’re heading to the aircraft carrier it’s on right now.”

Fitz closed his eyes and sighed. So much for the leftover beef Lo Mein in his fridge he’d been planning on having for dinner. At this rate, it’d be green and fuzzy by the time he got back.

A little voice inside of him reminded Fitz that once upon a time he’d joined SHIELD to make the world a better place and help people, no be a glorified repairman. He’d dreamed of being part of a team and using his brain to find unique solutions to impossible challenges. Then the Academy had happened. He’d been the only person his age there and had trouble finding anyone to talk to because while his fellow cadets had been bright, they hadn’t been able to keep up with or appreciate what he was thinking most of the time.

Fitz had become increasingly isolated, and while his marks had been top of the class, he’d also earned a reputation for being difficult to work with. Which is how he’d ended up in New York instead of at Sci-Ops or The Hub. He’d tried to get along with coworkers, especially once he realized he wasn’t going to be doing much concept and design work where he was.

Instead, he’d just made things worse. The result was a lonely lab and minimal funding, and the feeling that he was missing a huge chunk of his life.

Maybe this was a chance to redeem himself. A way to do and be what he was meant to. A new start.

The helicopter left land behind and flew out over the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Fitz leaned back and closed his eyes.

Whatever was about to happen, he suspected his life was going to change.

What a terrifying thought.


	2. It's Gonna Be Me

The perfectly clear water sloshed against the black rocks surrounding the underground pool that was Jemma’s favorite place on the planet. She slipped into it, grateful for the geothermal activity that meant she had warm running water at all times. Where the waterway narrowed and exited the underground room served as a toilet, an extravagant luxury in a cave. She was really quite lucky, all things considered.

“I wanna see you out that door, baby, bye, bye, bye,” she sang to herself. Her Discman had gotten sand in it eons ago, but she’d had a few years of listening to the CDs she’d brought, and she’d memorized all of the songs.

The cavern echoed with her voice, and she hoped she never got crazy enough to imagine the echo was talking back to her. Being introverted and used to isolation helped some, but Jemma was worried that her mind would deteriorate without her realizing it. For all she knew, she might be crazy now. Though there were no volleyballs with bloody handprints sitting in her living room. So that was a point in her favor.

Research, record, observe, discover. Jemma repeated the words out loud. That was the mission. Being stuck on an intergalactic version of Gilligan’s Island didn’t change that. She was alive and would continue performing her duties faithfully until rescue arrived.

Cleanliness was part of that. She had plenty of plain soap and shampoo, which all smelled generically ‘clean’. Would carrying a few bars that smelled like roses have been that terrible?

She missed Earth-scents. Cheeseburgers, hot asphalt, laundromats, wet dog.

Jemma splashed in frustration, then floated on her back in the warm water and slowly chased those thoughts away.

Continue the mission.

She drifted silently for a few minutes, trying not to wish for someone to share her bath. Someone with strong, masculine hands, perhaps stubble on his cheeks that would feel delicious rubbing against her thighs.

Someone to make her laugh and work with her. Someone to love her.

She anchored herself with one hand on the hard lip of the pool and dragged the other down her body, stopping to pinch her nipples.

Jemma didn’t bother trying to conjure faces anymore. Masturbation was a normal activity and provided a sexual outlet when she didn’t have any other available to her, but she thought it weird that when she did imagine a partner, it was the idea of him that she wanked to. A vague concept of a person who enjoyed being around her and wanted to touch her, not a concrete set of physical characteristics. 

He wouldn’t care about the scar on her belly. Her fingers skimmed along its path. A bug had nearly done her in, and she’d had to sew the wound closed herself. The mark reminded her that she could fight and survive nearly anything, and she’d carried it for eight years.

Her fingers wandered lower and pushed between her legs.

She ached for someone. Someone to please her, to treasure her, to make her forget for a few seconds how it felt to be so very far away from everything. 

When she cried out softly with her completion, the sound didn’t echo, and her hand splashed down into the water in resignation.

She was always alone.

****

“Bloody hell!” Fitz bit out, crossing his arms.

He hated the monolith.

It was a rock. A big, ugly rock.

Only sometimes, in no pattern he could discover, it would liquify and slosh around in its enclosure. With no way to predict its actions, every time it did so was a surprise that made him jump.

It was if the rock was hungry.

“What now?” Mack asked from where he was seated at a desk with a laptop in front of him. They were in the ship's hold with the monolith, Mack setting up a new security program, and Fitz performing sensor checks.

“Your technicians calibrated the internal sensor wrong.”

Mack looked up. “Seriously?”

“Unless it’s actually 325 Celsius in there, then yes.” Fitz marched over and slapped a palm against the side of the rock’s plastic enclosure. “I can tell you it doesn’t feel like 325.”

“Lucky for you.” Mack’s calm riled Fitz up more, and he raked a hand through his hair.

“Get back, I’m going to grab it and redo the calibration.”

That caught Mack's attention. “Leave it for tomorrow, Turbo.”

“And waste an entire night’s worth of data? Not blasted likely.” Yes, there was a scheduled opening the next morning, but he didn’t want to wait. A quick dart in and out was not against the rules.

Mack rubbed his eyes. “Fine.” The metal decked clanged under Mack’s boots as he rose and walked to the corner furthest away from the monolith.

“I bet it was the blonde girl,” Fitz said as he hauled a stepstool over so he’d be able to reach the sensor when the door was open. “Whatever her name is.”

“Bobbi,” Mack supplied. “And it wasn’t. For the fortieth time, she’s bio, she’s not setting up the sensors.”

Fitz looked heavenward. Mack made it sound like Fitz should be keeping track of everybody and their names. He unlatched the door, the sound loud in the otherwise empty hold.

“Have you asked Daisy out yet?” Mack said.

Fitz huffed and climbed the footstool. “No. And I’m not going too. We’ve discussed this.”

“But you think she’s cute.”

“Of course I think she’s cute, that doesn’t mean I’m about to make an idiot of myself by asking her to dinner. We have nothing in common. I’d just bore her.” Fitz braced his feet, watched the monolith for a few seconds, and cracked the door open. “She’s fun to hang around with, have a few beers, but she’s a friend at best.”

“You have to stop selling yourself short,” Mack said while Fitz pushed himself up on his tiptoes so his fingers could reach the faulty sensor. “And Daisy probably isn’t your soulmate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a roll in the hay with her.”

Sensor in hand, Fitz dropped down to stand more securely on the footstool. Arm still inside the case, he glared at Mack. “I don’t want a one-night stand that’s going to make things awkward.”

Mack frowned. “You haven’t been with anybody, have you?”

“Aye, thanks. Would you like to print out a banner? Maybe with a giant arrow. Here’s Fitz, the virgin wonder?” Taking his arm out of the case, he slammed it closed, descended the step stool, and fumbled with the lock. “When was I supposed to be out getting laid? When I was a decade or more younger than every other student in my graduate classes?” He kicked the stool away. “How about at the Academy, where once again I was the youngest and the smartest?”

Mack pushed off the wall as Fitz finally got the latch to click. “Stop, Turbo. I’m not making fun of you.”

“You could have bloody well fooled me.” Fitz glared at his friend. “I don’t need to hear about how terrible I am at finding a romantic partner. I know.” His shoulders slumped. “I know there’s a whole piece of my life missing and I’m apparently completely helpless to fill the void. Thanks for the reminder.” He carried the sensor to a workbench and attached it to a clip.

“You’re not missing anything,” Mack said, having followed Fitz.

“I am.” Fitz linked the probe to his computer with a cable and fired up the program to do the calibration. He grabbed a Kit-Kat bar, leftover from lunch, that sat beside the computer and shoved it into his pocket for a snack later.

Mack sighed. “You don’t need—”

“Stop. I’m not talking about having another person complete me or that kind of shite, I mean it’s something about me. I have all this care, concern, love—” he put his hand over his heart. “And nobody to share it with. And I know that’s my fault. I should have taken the pity shags birds have offered, but I have some flaw where I simply can’t. I want to love and be loved.”

Mack was silent. Fitz harrumphed and recalibrated the sensor so it read room temperature as room temperature. He checked the settings of the other instruments as well, including the camera. If they were ever going to figure out the mystery of the big, black rock, the equipment needed to work right.

“Hey,” Mack said as Fitz removed the computer cable from the sensor and unhooked the clip. “I get it. I do. I really need you to know I want you to be happy, but I think I’m trying to solve a problem you don’t have. So let's talk about next weekend instead. We have R&R off this boat, and I’m thinking about hitting the gambling tables.”

“I can card count,” Fitz said as he unlatched the door to the Monolith again. “I always win card games with my mum and she doesn’t know it’s because I can keep track of where the cards are, including which ones have been played and which haven’t.” He climbed on the stool, which teetered and nearly sent him face-first into the rock. “It’d make Atlantic City fun since I’ve not tried it out in the real world.”

Mack grinned. “There’s buffets, anything you can imagine.”

Fitz’s stomach growled. “It’ll be better than what passes as food on this ship.” He stretched out and pressed the sensor back in place. “I could do with a real steak. Maybe kidney pie.”

“Kidney pie? I might have over-promised, let me google.”

Fitz double-checked the sensor’s alignment before stepping off the stool. He put his hands on his hips and turned to face Mack. “You said everything. I’m holding you to that. Especially cake. With icing. A corner piece.”

“Don’t want much, do you?” Mack said, typing on his phone.

The latch for the case closed easily this time. “Corner piece.” And maybe a girlfriend, who’d want to sit on the couch and watch telly with him while they talked about their days and ate pizza. He returned to his computer to ensure that the sensor was functioning. “Everything looks good here. Let’s get chow, and then I am so going to beat you in Infection.”

“Is that what we’re playing tonight?” Mack walked towards the door. “Hey, I think this place might actually have your pie.” He looked up. “Double check the lock so I can mark that as being done, will you?”

“Yeah,” Fitz shuffled over, nearly jumping out of his skin as the monolith went from rock to liquid. “I hate when—” The door to the containment unit burst opened and Fitz yelled as the rock engulfed him. It smelled of dry earth and the sweet scent of death.

Then he was nowhere at all.

****

Fitz coughed as he rolled across a sand dune.

What the fuck?

A sound behind him made him whip around just in time to see a portal of some kind as it disappeared.

The monolith.

“What a shite door,” he yelled, climbing to his feet. “It’s shite. I told them it’s shite. But does anyone ever listen to me?”

He didn’t answer himself as he looked around. The light wasn’t quite right, too blue. The entire landscape felt wrong.

His heart thudded. He wasn’t on an aircraft carrier. Hands shaking, he pulled his mobile out. The screen with its Halo-themed wallpaper was intact, and it showed the time, but there wasn’t any service.

Fitz had a sinking feeling that when he found out where he was, he wasn’t going to like it. At least the air was breathable.

He sat down, aware that he had almost nothing. There was a chocolate bar in his cardigan pocket, but no water. Because no wanker walked around clutching a water bottle twenty-four seven on the off chance they ended up on…in…an alien landscape.

“I suppose I answered the question of what the monolith is,” he told the sand. “Not that it does much good.”

He sat down to wait for the portal to reopen. It did so at a minimum of every couple days if the rock going liquid was what the catalyst was.

Mack would save him.

Fitz sat. And sat. He shivered through a long night unable to sleep, and the next morning, he was forced into realizing he had to find supplies of some kind. Or at least water. He couldn’t bring himself to eat the chocolate. It was the last bit of home that he had.

He trudged over one hill, and then another. And another. There were several more after that.

His mind was fuzzy.

“Dehydration,” he mumbled as he crested yet another dune. He was very far from home, somewhere with a wrong colored sun and stars in no recognizable pattern.

He was going to die.

Fitz sank to his knees and laid himself out on the lumpy swirls of sand, staring up at the sky. He should have taken one of those pity shags. He was going to die never knowing what a proper kiss felt like. 

“Sorry,” he told the universe. He’d always believed that fate would send the woman he was meant to love to him, now he wasn’t even getting a last corner piece of cake.

Fitz closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. 


	3. One More Time

Jemma sneezed as a dust devil whipped past her as she exited her home. It pulled her shirt askew, leaving a breast exposed, and Jemma had to plant the butt of her spear in the sand to straighten the too big and threadbare button-up. She really should make a new one soon, but it was hard for her to quit using anything until it completely fell apart. There were only so many spares.

At least her shoes were sturdy, and she still had multiple untouched pairs in her supplies.

Hefting her spear and making sure her canteen was secure on its strap, she started towards one of the few places edible material grew on Maveth. It wasn’t her favorite, but she’d determined the protein and vitamins in it were a good addition to her diet, and that made it worth having to fight the not-quite-a-plant for a limb.

She sang to herself as she walked. “_This loneliness is killing me, and I must confess I still believe…_” She wondered what Brittney was up to and if she was still singing. Or dead. Or if popular music had gotten completely weird. And how long it would take radio signals from earth to reach Maveth. The latter she could approximately calculate. If she was correct and she was on the complete other side of the Milky Way, the answer was a long, long time. 

Cresting the top of a dune, she shielded her eyes and surveyed the surrounding area before focusing on the dip between hills. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. Something lay on the ground. Something vaguely human-shaped.

That was impossible.

Jemma gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth as she fought down a sudden wave of tears. She needed to be calm and assess the situation. There were no signs of it being more than one individual. She could see a single set of footprints coming down the far dune. The shape wasn’t moving. The person might not even be alive.

Only one way to check. She gripped her spear and trotted towards the prone form. The person didn’t move. She halted about ten feet away.

It was a man.

He was lying on his back, his face was slack, but his cheeks were normal colored. He didn’t look dead. He also didn’t appear to be an intrepid explorer. He was lean, with light brown hair that curled slightly and darker stubble on his jaw. He had a plaid shirt with long sleeves, a cardigan tied around his waist, and pants that looked like he’d bought them at The Gap. He had no supplies with him. Nothing.

What the hell? How’d he gotten here? The universe didn’t simply spit out hot guys on far-flung desolate worlds.

Hot? She was going barmy, though he did seem to check most of her boxes. Which meant he was probably dumb as a post. Would most likely have to be to have ended up on Maveth.

Dropping her spear, she cautiously approached the man and knelt beside him. His chest rose and fell in a regular pattern. Jemma slowly reached out towards his throat. She almost expected him to disappear, his form pop like a soap bubble and she’d be left reaching for thin air or some lump of refuse the wind had blown her way.

Her fingers met warm skin. Trembling, she slid the tip of two fingers to his pulse point. His heart beat steady and strong, and his stubble scratched at her fingers.

He was real. Or this was a very real hallucination, which Jemma wasn’t entirely willing to rule out yet. Shuffling closer to him, she leaned over and put her ear to his chest to confirm his heartbeat. It was loud, but what made her gasp was his scent. He smelled sweaty and somewhat stale, but also human and male and…right.

So very right.

Jemma closed her eyes, breathing him in and feeling the thump of his pulse.

She wasn’t alone.

There was a faint groan, and then the man yelped as he woke. He tried to sit up, but she was leaning on him. After a moment of confusion, he propped himself on his elbow while she scrambled backward, her face burning.

His eyes were blue and clear, but they weren’t looking at her face. His gaze had gotten stuck somewhere below her chin.

Jemma glanced down. Her shirt was twisted to the side, and she had a boob hanging out, the nipple tight.

Well, crap.

She yanked her shirt straight and crossed her arms over her chest for good measure. Her face burned even hotter. The man’s gaze finally found hers. He swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing.

“Er, hello,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “This might sound like a daft question, but can you tell me where I am?”

He was Scottish, the accent rolling over her like warm molasses. Another voice in all the silence around her. Jemma bit her lip as her heart thundered in her ears. All the way at the end of the universe and she’d run into someone from home.

“Can you speak? English?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, sorry, hello. My name’s Jemma, and unfortunately, I can’t tell you precisely where you are, but I can give you a general sense. You're on a planet that’s not Earth, named Maveth. Best I can tell, we’re in a completely different arm of the spiral galaxy that also contains Earth, but it’s a tad bit hard pinpointing the location with the instruments I have, even with as long as I’ve been here.” It was dreadfully exciting, finally being able to tell someone about her work.

His eyes had gone very wide. “Fitz. Er, I’m Fitz. Leopold Fitz.” He frowned. “You’re from…er, how long have you been here?”

“Sheffield, and ten years.”

“Fuck me.” His brows drew together as Jemma attempted to not think of fucking. “Is there…”

He trailed off as she shook her head. “There were others, but I’m the only one left. This place doesn’t have many amenities.”

“I noticed.” He scrambled to sit, ending up cross-legged on the sand. “Lack of water, for one.”

She held out her canteen. “Lots more where this came from, drink up.”

Fitz downed large mouthfuls greedily until a few drops escaped and ran from the corner of his mouth down his neck. She watched, fascinated, as Fitz paused to catch his breath. He swiped at his lips with his shirt sleeve. “How did you decide on that as a possible location for Maveth?”

“Well, there’s rather a lot of—”

“Did you take into account redshift? The groupings of stars are completely unfamiliar to me here, but are there any you could identify by their spectrum? At all? With parallax—”

She burst out laughing.

Fitz paused. “What?”

“Oxford, doctorates in chemistry and biology. And you?”

“Cambridge. Doctorate in Engineering. I was sixteen.”

Excitement bubbled up inside her. “So was I. I was headhunted by several different agencies but went with NASA with a promise of exploring new worlds. I guess they kept their promise. I just didn’t know it was going to be a one-way ticket.”

“That’s dreadful.” He tapped his fingers against his chin. “Can you show me your calculations?”

Jemma blinked. “Are you my maths teacher now? Show my work?” It was all too much. It was impossible. Jemma had finally gone round the bend and started hallucinating. She’d never met someone who could keep up with her mind, let alone another genius with a sexy accent and a face that made her melt. He was a flight of fancy. She’d cracked.

“Look, Jemma—”

The sound of her name on his lips was the last straw. She couldn’t do this. Why her subconscious decided this was what she needed and not a four-course turkey dinner or a Big Mac, she had no idea. She spun on her heel and marched back towards her spear, bending to pick it up.

“Wait, where are you going?” he called.

She turned towards him. He looked devastated. “Are you real? Because I don’t think you can possibly be. I’m stuck by myself for a decade and then suddenly the perfect man just magically appears? Whatever. My subconscious can fuck right off.”

“Perfect man?” he said, his expression positively bewildered.

She sighed and turned around again. “Go back to dreamland, Fitz. And take your handsome face with you.” Clutching her spear tightly, she tromped through the loose sand, thoroughly brassed off that her mind had chosen this way to tease her.

“Hey!” Fitz called, and she could hear him running after her. “Hey, wait, where do you get off calling me a hallucination? Clearly you’re the made-up one.”

She stamped the butt of her spear on the ground and turned to face him. “Excuse me? I’m the made-up one? How do you figure that?”

Fitz panted as he ran a hand through his hair. “Severe dehydration. I’d already been working long hours and needed dinner when I was wrapping up things with the monolith for the night.”

“Monolith,” she whispered. She slammed the door shut on memories of walking through-

Jemma inhaled sharply. 

“Yeah, stupid big rock. SHIELD, the other SHIELD, was hiding it and the director wanted me to figure out what the hell it was, and I was just leaving to have a bloody sandwich when…I guess the door wasn’t latched properly…it liquified, caught me. Next thing I knew I was here. I waited as long as I could where I landed, then I started walking."

“I fail to see how that makes me the made-up one?”

“Mack’s been teasing me about finding a girlfriend, so it was on my mind, and I lay down thinking I’m never going to wake up again…but when I did there was an angel bent over me, flashing me with an absolutely perfect tit. Smart, gorgeous, and…” he stopped and waved a hand before dropping it to his side and bowing his head.

Jemma's mind reeled. His story made sense, more or less. “You’re SHIELD?”

“Yeah.”

“They were one of the groups that tried to recruit me.”

“I think we would have been in the same class at the Academy.” He peeked at her from under his lashes, and her heart did something funny in her chest. What would her life have been like if she hadn’t come here? If she’d met this man ten years ago? Long nights sitting beside him doing homework sounding like the most amazing paradise.

She toed the sand. “That would have been nice. I didn’t have much of anyone to talk to while I was training.”

“Yeah, me either.”

Jemma took a deep breath. She still couldn't be entirely sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Her very own Wilson. Though Fitz was much more entertaining, at least so far. And, real or not, she wanted to spend more time with him. “Do you want to come and see my calculations on Maveth? We can decide later which one of us isn’t real.”

“Okay, sure.”

“Follow me.” Fitz, carrying her canteen, eagerly walked beside her. He asked a few questions about the planet, including gravitational forces, and she had a good time chatting with him until they reached her home. She paused outside the hidden entrance.

“This is me,” she said. “I feel rather odd bringing you inside. No one else has ever been here.”

“I’m just an expression of your subconscious mind, so don’t worry about me.” He smiled as he said it and she laughed. This entire situation was odd, and what else was he going to do? Give her a peck and find another cave to crash in?

She was being ridiculous. “At least I won’t have to feed you if you’re only a figment of my imagination.”

At the mention of food, Fitz swayed forward. “Do you have anything to eat?”

“Actually, yeah. The mission here was stocked for a dozen men for five years. Plus me. I’ve got a lot of canned goods, MREs and other supplies. Vitamins, clothes, you name it.”

“Tea?” he said, sounding so enthusiastic she almost laughed again. Of course he’d like tea.

She put a hand on his shoulder. Under her palm, he felt warm and solid. “There’s tea.”

“You’re the best hallucination I’ve ever met.”


	4. Walkin' On The Sun

Fitz stepped towards the narrow channel between two rocks, meaning to follow Jemma right into it the darkness behind it, when he abruptly realized that might not be a great idea.

He was on a strange planet, and its one other inhabitant had found him, and she happened to be exactly his dream version of a woman?

Jemma reappeared, squeezed between the rocks. She looked him up and down, then put a hand out, touching his wrist. “I’m just making sure you’re real, come have tea.”

“I’m not sure I should.”

“What?”

“This is crazy. You have to be…to be, I don’t know, some alien and you’re luring me back there to slaughter me.”

Jemma raised a brow and pushed her dark, somewhat tangled hair behind her ear. “And how do you figure that? Why wouldn’t I just kill you out here?”

“I don’t know!” He dragged a hand down his face. “But if you wanted to lure me into your lair to liquify my insides, you…you picked the right way to do it.”

_Don’t look down, don’t look down. Don’t look at how her tits shape that shirt. _He only dropped his gaze for a moment.

Her expression became cross. “And how, pray tell, did I manage that feat?”

“You’re…you’re…exactly right.” Fitz needed to warm up to the subject.

“So therefore I’m going to eat your brains?”

“Liquify my insides.”

She sighed. “My mistake. Alien, not zombie.”

“Precisely.”

“What do you mean, I’m exactly right?”

He leaned a shoulder against the rock, studying her. “You’re bloody amazing. Like you walked out of my fantasies. Your eyes, and hair, and…” He held his hands in front of his chest.

“And boobs?” she said dryly.

“Yes.” His arms fell to his sides. “More importantly, you’re brilliant. Smarter than me. Two doctorates to my one. In complementary fields to mine. Though I have to say the freckles are overkill. I didn’t need stars and constellations on your skin to know you were perfect.”

Jemma’s gaze avoided his. “I’m going to put the kettle on for tea. If you think this is an elaborate setup, then stay here. There’s not a lot of bugs around this time of year, but there’s a few, and if you’re gone in the morning—” She shrugged and turned away. “Couldn’t I have hallucinated someone more accommodating?” she muttered as she disappeared into the darkness.

Fitz stood outside the cave. He pulled his phone out and checked it, still no service, not that he’d been expecting it. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since he’d ended up here, wherever exactly here was.

There were calculations and notes inside the cave.

Or a pile of skeletons.

The wind picked up, dragging grit across his skin and whistling around the sharp spires of the rocks. Fitz shivered. He untied his cardigan and slid his arms into the sleeves. The wind mocked him by slicing right through the knit. 

He stared at the cave. If he went in there, it was either to talk more with the most attractive woman he’d ever met, or to die. He’d die if he stayed out here. From exposure, or whatever bugs were.

Might as well get the death part over with if that was his lot.

He squeezed through into the darkness and groped blindly at rough rock walls before he spotted a faint light. He followed it down a short, narrow channel and turned a corner. The cave widened out and became a rather charming living space. There was a rag carpet, beanbag chairs, a cobbled-together bookcase and desk, folding tables, and Jemma standing to one side in front of what he supposed served as her kitchen. She had plastic cabinets and drawers, and even a sink. Though where water would be coming from remained a mystery.

Steam rose from an older-looking electric kettle with a taped-up cord. The lighting was muted, and he wondered if she had limiters to preserve the life of the bulbs that hung from the cave's roof.

An ancient CRT computer sat on one table, covered in dust as if it hadn’t been used for years.

Jemma stared at him. “Fitz?”

She was real. This was all real. His stomach lurched.

“I think we’re going to have to accept that we are both actual people,” he said. “Sorry I was a bit weird out there.” He tried a smile. “This is very nice. Perhaps a cuppa and then I can look at your notes?”

“Thank you, and of course.”

She pulled out a second cup from one of the cupboards and set it beside the first. A drawer squeaked as she tugged it open, but then Jemma hesitated and glanced at him. She shut the drawer and opened the other cupboard. Standing on her tiptoes, Jemma reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a small container. “This is my favorite,” she said. “I brought several boxes along as one of my luxury items. I usually only drink it on my birthday, but this is a special occasion.”

Her expression was odd, and he quickly shook his head. “Don’t go to any bother on my account.”

“It’s not a bother, I just…I’m very sorry, I’m glad you’re here, and I know you are very not glad—” Her hands trembled as she dropped the tea bags into the cups. Fitz hastened across the room and reached out to put his hand over hers. Her fingers were rough and chilled. She looked up at him, eyes damp.

“Well, this isn’t the best thing to ever happen to me,” he said. “But I’m not sure it’s the worst. Got to meet you. Couldn’t do that if I was still tinkering with all of SHIELD’s broken field equipment.” He rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles.

Jemma gave the tiniest laugh. “Are you admitting I’m not a brain-sucking alien?”

Fitz wished he was suave enough to spin that into a beautifully reassuring phrase, but truthfully, his brain had gotten a little fuzzy from standing so close to her. “I was wrong. You’re still perfect, though."

Her cheeks pinked, and she swayed towards him, her eyes dipping to look at his mouth.

The kettle whistled shrilly, and Fitz nearly fell over as he dropped Jemma’s hands and scrambled back.

“Sorry,” she said, turning it off. “I should have warned you it’s loud. And also that I don’t have any sugar or milk.”

“It’s good English tea on an alien planet. I think I’ll survive.” Fitz was certain black tea would be fine. He was less certain how he was going to survive Jemma.

****

The tea tasted delicious. Jemma hadn’t done what she usually did when she opened the Tupperware and count out the bags, followed by doing the math of figuring how old she’d be when she ran out birthday tea.

The count would be different now anyway, as she was sharing her precious stash with Fitz. It wouldn’t be right to give her first guest ever anything besides the best she had. Her mother would be horrified at her daughter's lack of manners. 

He made a delighted face.“This is wonderful, where’s it from?”

“A small batch place in Sheffield, it’s my mum’s favorite. Mine too. Mostly I make do with Lipton.”

Fitz's nose wrinkled. “Me too.”

Her gaze lingered on his lips. They were pink and nicely shaped in a masculine way. Jemma had very nearly kissed them before the kettle interrupted. Nearly kissed him. Fitz.

She’d found a strange man on the dunes, brought him home, and nearly kissed him.

Jemma sighed. It was a little his fault for being so kissable, and for saying she was smart, pretty, and a…a fantasy. Just as she was, in old clothes that didn’t fit, wind-styled hair, and a face that hadn’t seen makeup in years. Though he was bedraggled and dusty with his hair going in forty different directions and she didn’t mind.

Quite the opposite.

How convenient of the universe to giver her a companion on the outer rim of nowhere that pushed so many of her buttons. But maybe he wasn’t quite as smart as he seemed? That would be a bucket of ice water over her head.

She set her cup on the table. “I’ll get my notes. Please make yourself at home.” She retrieved the notebook that contained her finalized calculations and handmade tables, graphs, and diagrams on Maveth’s position in the universe. Her heart beat faster because, at long last, she was sharing her work. Beside it on the shelf were other volumes, including her observations of weather, flora and fauna, and the incomplete work on how and when the portals between Maveth and Earth opened. Her computer had died while she’d been working on that problem and the math wasn’t the kind you could do by hand. Couldn’t Fitz have shown up with a 64-bit processor and a gigabyte of memory?

“Thank you.” Fitz claimed a chair and eagerly took the composition book Jemma offered him. She sat across from him as he flipped it open and sipped his tea as he scanned the pages and pages of notes she’d made, her calculations, and her conclusions. He looked up after long moments of silence. “I sorry I’m not saying much, this is fascinating.”

Jemma blinked. “I hadn’t even realized…I suppose I’m not the best conversationalist. Somewhat out of practice after not having talked to anyone in…a bit.” She drank the end of her tea and popped up, gathering Fitz’s empty cup as well and heading to the sink to wash them.

“I don’t mind quiet,” Fitz said from behind her. “Don’t feel bad. I’m rubbish company at the best of times.”

Jemma bet he was anything but.

“Do you mind if I write on a blank page?” Fitz asked. “I have a few things I want to work out.”

“Not at all,” she said. “As long as you explain what you’re doing when I’m done tidying.”

“Of course.”

Jemma flipped the switch for the little pump that brought water from the underground spring to her sink, as well as the one that discharged it. She quickly washed the two cups with a rough bit of sponge, rinsed, turned off the pumps, and set the dishes on a worn towel. Maveth’s air had little humidity, meaning anything wet airdried rapidly.

She returned to the table to look over Fitz's shoulder at the complicated equation he had written out in the notebook. There was a small, square, device in his hand that he was using as a calculator. It appeared to have a touch screen. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at the device.

Fitz frowned then his eyes widened. “It’s my phone. My smartphone.”

“Like…a mobile phone?”

Fitz opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. “Er, yes, they’ve come a long way in the last ten years.”

Jemma laughed, though she wanted to cry as well. There was so much she’d missed. Grabbing the other chair at the table, she pulled it around beside Fitz and sat down. “I suppose ten years is a long time. It’s all screen.” She hunched over towards the phone, and Fitz handed it to her. The mobile was surprisingly light, and she turned it over in her hands a few times before poking the buttons on the calculator. “You can read email on it?”

“Yeah, browse the web, all that. I do have a special battery that lasts a lot longer than the factory ones-my own design, that-and the kind of memory chip that the public can’t buy.”

“It’s so cool.” Jemma handed it back, their fingers brushing and sending a shiver up her arm. She focused on the equations on the page and tried to tune out the lingering ache that had formed low in her belly. “Are you checking my math?”

“Guilty,” he said, tapping the pencil eraser against the page. “I thought you were right, but I needed to do it myself because…” He trailed off and swallowed hard.

“Because if I’m right, it means we’re very far from home?”

“That.” His knee jiggled in time with the tapping.

“I’m right, but I’ve never gotten used to what the numbers say.” Her back bent as she curled around her middle. Being lost never became easier. “Sorry.”

“Bollocks to that. It’s not your fault.” He quickly finished up the equation and wrote down the same huge number of kilometers she’d gotten.

Fitz closed the notebook.

“Sorry,” she said again.

He tilted his head towards her. “There’s got to be a lot you miss from home.”

“You have no idea.” She giggled as his expression became alarmed. “No,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. It’s so exciting to even talk about everything. Like fresh salads, or pizza. Or chocolate.” She bit her lip and moaned softly at the mere thought of biting into a candy bar. “I suppose I should be glad everything I have is blandly nutritious since my teeth have been cavity-free for years.”

“Shite,” he breathed.

Jemma shrugged. “I miss shows on the telly. I had quite a few Doctor Who episodes on VHS. But I’d settle for an episode of anything at this point. And all the Harry Potter books and movies must be out now.”

Fitz perked up. “You like Doctor Who? And yes, they split the final book into two movies. Oh, and there’s even a Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction at one of the big theme parks in Florida. I haven’t been, but I’d like to.” He grimaced, but then it smoothed out. “Someone will come looking for me.”

Jemma didn’t respond to that, because she could remember when she’d believed the same thing. “Don’t spoil any of Harry Potter for me, or I’ll…not do anything because I can’t, but I’ll be very cross.”

“I won’t, promise.”

“And yes, I love Doctor Who.”

“Did you know about the new series?”

Her mouth fell open. “New series? You are such a tease.”

“I’m not at all.” He held up his phone. “I’ve got the first two seasons on here, and all the Harry Potter books and movies.”

Jemma rapidly blinked her eyes, but the tears still came. Fitz leaned towards her, and she swayed into his arms. He held her as she cried. “I’m usually not a watering pot,” she said between sobs. “But you’re here and the sweetest man on Earth, and you have my favorite things.”

Fitz rubbed his hands over her back and made soothing noises.

“I’ll make dinner. It’s going to be canned hash with peaches on the side. Can we eat and watch?”

“Of course.” His voice came out all rumbly and Jemma held him tighter.

He hugged her more securely in return as if she was the one comforting him. 

They stayed that way, twisted in their chairs with their arms around each other, until Jemma had stopped crying. Until she started to really need dinner.

Frankly, she would have stayed in his comforting embrace, breathing in his male scent, until forever, but Fitz finally shifted restlessly.

“Jemma, what do you do for a loo?” he asked in a whisper.

“Oh, right, let me show you!” She jumped to her feet as if she hadn’t just been basking in his embrace. He followed her down the hall and around the corner. Jemma helped him find the pull cord for the lights. They snapped on.

Fitz gasped at her bathroom with its clear water pool. She watched him as he turned in wonder. There was a second sound of surprise. “That’s how you plumb the sink.” He trotted across the room to examine the pipes and pump. “Ingenious.”

She glowed at the praise. “I’ve had some time. And I was initially told it would never work. I made it work. If only the guy who’d so smugly told me I was wrong hadn’t been bug food by the time I cobbled it together.”

“Nobody should ever tell you that you can’t do anything,” Fitz said absently as he ran a long finger over the pipe.

Jemma wanted to hug him again, but she restrained herself by shoving her hands in her pockets. “Um, other things to know. I have a cot I pull out at night to sleep in my living room, but there are other little rooms off the main passageway if you want. And my toilet is a bit makeshift, but it’s on the other side of the pool where the water runs back under the rocks. Cleanest, that way. There’s biodegradable toilet paper, which I ask you to use sparingly. And there’s soap by the pool to wash your hands. I’m going to start dinner.” She hurriedly headed towards the hall.

“Jemma,” Fitz called, and she spun to see him standing by the pool. “Um, well…can I sleep with you?”

She’d been taking a step back as he spoke, and her heel caught on the rock floor, and she had to fight to stay upright. “What?”

Fitz flushed red. “I mean, another cot, in the same room? I’m not sure…I don’t want to be by myself in the dark.”

Jemma forced a cheery smile and tried to fit all the images of naked Fitz and naked her doing things together back into the pandora’s box he’d just opened in her mind. “Of course, I think I’d like that too.”

He nodded, and she darted away before she could beg him to actually sleep with her. She detoured to get the cans of hash and peaches, and picked up a cot and a set of bedding from her storeroom. The linen was dusty but should be fine with a brisk shagging…er, shaking out.

Jemma grabbed her frying pan and turned on the single electric burner that served as her stove. It glowed orange as it heated, and she felt sympathy for it, because, since Fitz had shown up, parts of her burned just as brightly.


	5. Bye Bye Bye

Fitz jolted awake. He sat bolt upright, confused for a moment at being surrounded by so much rock. Rock on the ceiling, rock on the walls. The bed under him felt like a rock.

Maveth.

A soft sound not too far away had him wildly searching for the source in the dim light of a single bulb.

Jemma. The frantic pace of Fitz’s pulse slowed. Jemma was curled up on her side, her hair in disarray and her hands tucked under her chin. Her lips were parted, and a faint line had formed between her brows. She whimpered slightly, apparently in the midst of a dream.

Fitz desperately wished he’d met her at some other point in his life, in some other place.

Because there’s no way that wouldn’t go terribly wrong. He flopped back down onto his cot. He could easily imagine Jemma sweeping into the NY Sci-Tech facility, looking for an engineer to help on a project. She’d be dressed to the nines and dragging along a husband with a face like a god who could bench press twice Fitz’s weight. Jemma would laugh at Fitz, and then work with him for ten minutes, declare him prickly, and that would be that.

The only reason she bothered talking to him here was because she didn’t have a choice.

Jemma whimpered louder, and her legs twitched, pulling her blanket off her shoulders. It looked like it wasn’t a good dream. Her frown deepened, and she made a sad, plaintive noise that tugged at his heart.

Slipping out of his cot, he crept the few feet over to hers.

“Jemma?” he said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Jemma, you’re having a nightmare.” She panted in her sleep, fast and panicky. “Jemma,” he said louder, giving her a small shake. With a cry, her eyes popped open and fixed on his face. For a moment, her gaze remained wide and fearful, but then he could feel her relax under his hand.

“Nightmare?” he tried again.

“I get them regularly,” she replied in a voice so quiet he had to lean towards her to hear. “That’s not a surprising thing. A bug nearly killed me, and I routinely dream they’re trying to get in here, though none ever have.” She sucked on her lower lip. “It was different this time because you were there, and I couldn’t reach you and…”

“I’m sorry.” Was that the correct response when someone was worried about a dream version of you? He took her hand and squeezed. “I’m right here.” She still looked upset, and he wanted to make it better, even though he didn’t know how to even start doing that.

Jemma clung to him as she checked the clock on a nearby shelf. “There’s still hours before dawn. We should go back to sleep.” Her hand didn’t let him go, and he didn’t try to move.

They stared at each other.

“Fitz?” she said finally.

“I don’t think I can sleep not knowing you’re okay.”

“It can take a while after a bad dream for me to drift off again. I’ll simply recite times tables until I’m able to rest.”

He hated how resigned she sounded. She shouldn’t have to face anything alone, not when he was there. “I could stay right here, beside you.”

“The floor is far too uncomfortable for that.” She worked her lower lip again. “But it’d be nice if…what about if we shared?” Jemma scooted herself back on the cot, opening a sliver of room on it. “I’d feel so much better.”

He studied the narrow space that would require every bit of him to be pushed against all of Jemma. A part of him knew he should return to his bunk before he found his heart broken, but the temptation was far too great. And it was too late anyway, he knew he’d already fallen hard and fast, and the heartbreak would be inevitable. To top it off, he just wanted to hold her.

“It’s okay if that’s too much,” she said, and her hand tried to pull out of his.

He tightened his grip. “I want to.” Carefully, he worked his way onto the cot. His knee ended up between hers and his arm over her as she snuggled against his chest.

“This is better,” she said, making a soft, happy noise into his shirt.

“Yeah.” His voice came out gruff. Jemma felt warm, and like she belonged against him. Holding her was comfortable. “And I should probably ask, what are bugs?”

“They’re big, multilegged, alien predators.”

“Now I’m sorry I asked.”

“When we first got here, some of the crew told stories about there being something on this planet. Something old and evil. They sounded excited to find it. At the time, I thought they were making up stories to scare the rest of us. Only we didn’t find anything like that, just the bugs. The people telling the stories went back through when the portal the next couple times it opened, and I didn’t think much about it. People came and went. I didn’t realize it was all of them until there were no more portals, no more support, and those of us here were stranded.”

“Oh, Jemma.”

“Someone on the other side knows people are here. NASA has to return. For me, or for my data. Someone will want to know about a whole other world.”

His mind spun. Things weren’t adding up. Stranding scientists because…they were expendable? A mission being disappeared because the people holding the purse strings hadn't found whatever they were after? He only knew one group that evil. The one that had shaken SHIELD to its foundations.

“I don’t think you imagined anything. Hydra…while you’ve been here it was discovered Hydra had infiltrated, well, everything. They had fingers in too many pies to count. I bet they ensured funding and personnel for the mission you were on. They didn’t find what they wanted, and you were collateral damage.”

“Nazis funded a space mission?” She sounded incredulous as she shifted on the cot.

“I can’t be sure, but it sounds like them, the bastards.”

“Still doesn’t explain what they were looking for.”

“Some kind of alien artifact. Or an actual alien.”

There were long moments of silence. “Fitz, will anyone try to find you?”

“Maybe. At least one person knows I’m here. I’d like to think he’s trying to mount a rescue.”

“That’d be lovely.”

He didn’t respond. Would Mack be looking for him? How expendable did SHIELD consider Fitz? He stroked his hand over Jemma’s hair and back until she became heavy with slumber. Her breath tickled his throat, and his nose was full of her scent, which was mostly the soap she used on her hair, but a little of the earthiness that made up her unique smell.

Fitz tried to memorize it, for when they were rescued, and Jemma realized there was an entire planet full of men much more deserving of her than him.

****

For nearly a decade, Jemma had awoken at the same time every morning. She’d get up and tuck her cot away, make tea, have a protein bar, and prepare to make her daily observations.

This morning was different. Her internal clock informed her that she had slept in. Also, she was far warmer than she should be. And she couldn’t move. A swell of panic quickly ebbed as she realized that what was keeping her in place was Fitz.

He’d ended up draped over her and had a body temperature that felt roughly the same as the surface of the sun. Jemma wiggled her leg out from under the cover to cool off. The immediate effect was that Fitz mumbled and pushed himself more firmly against her.

Something hard poked at her thigh and Jemma froze. She knew exactly what part of him, even warmer than the rest of his body, that happened to be. All of her went up in flames. Her heart pounded, her sex throbbed, and her breasts ached as her nipples tightened into points of need. She didn’t know what to do with herself. It was an entirely new situation for her.

Okay, she needed to think. Her first instinct was to do what she desired--rub frantically against Fitz. Which was not polite since he wasn’t awake. To fix that, she could wake him up. Then he could rub back, and possibly there could be a great deal more rubbing of all kinds.

Her body really liked that idea.

But her rational mind had to chime in. She’d met Fitz yesterday. A morning erection in a man was a common biological occurrence, and her reaction to it was not his fault. She should wake him and let him take the lead.

Jemma hoped he would roll on top of her and shag her silly.

“Fitz,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his ear. “Fitz, wake up.”

He snorted softly, and she knew the instant he became aware because his lower half jerked away from hers, much to her disappointment.

“Hi,” she said as he dazedly blinked at her.

“Hi.” He swallowed. “I didn’t mean to squish you.”

“It’s okay. This is the best I’ve slept in ages.”

“Oh, okay.” He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Me too.” A tiny smile turned the corners of his lips up.

How was she supposed to not kiss him when he looked like that? Her fingers ran down his side, over his cardigan. She stopped when something crinkled.

Fitz’s face lit up, and his hand pushed hers out of the way. “Fancy something special for breakfast?” he asked breathlessly as he grabbed whatever it was that’d made the noise. “I’d completely forgotten I’d even shoved this thing in my pocket and…and I want you to have all of it. No arguments.”

“What is it?” She propped herself on one elbow, trying to see.

Slowly, teasingly, he drew a small orange rectangle from his pocket. He kept his hand over most of it until he dangled it in front of her face. “One slightly melted Kit-Kat bar.”

Jemma gaped. A chocolate bar. She grabbed it from him and held the package in her hands. “Do you have anything else tucked away that I’m going to want to put in my mouth?”

Fitz flushed, made an incoherent squeaking sound, and abruptly sat up on the edge of the cot with the covers bunched in his lap. It took Jemma a second to figure out what’d happened, but then she grinned at his back. She wouldn’t be averse to giving or receiving oral sex, but…_chocolate_.

Jemma sat up beside Fitz, her thigh against his. She ripped open the wrapper, and a luscious scent flooded out to make her mouth water. “You have no idea,” she murmured. Even the sight of the chocolate was nearly overwhelming. The wrapper rustled as she pulled it all the way off. Four perfect sticks. She snapped one off, moved to take a bite, but then felt selfish. She held it out to Fitz. “You have one. I’m going to eat the other three, but it might be a long time before you have more.” Possibly for the rest of his life.

Fitz shook his head. “It’s all for you.”

“Please, I’ll be happier if we share.” That did the trick. Fitz took the piece of chocolate and Jemma immediately broke off another piece and stuck the entire thing in her mouth. It tasted so good, so spectacular, like sugar and civilization. She moaned, and Fitz clutched the quilt tighter.

It made Jemma giggle around her bite, but then she was lost again as the crisp part crunched.

“This isn’t a great breakfast,” she said, breaking off another stick and putting half of it into her mouth and sucking on it.

“Nutritionally, no,” Fitz said, his eyes fixing on her mouth. He still had his stick between his fingers. “But priceless when it comes to enjoyment.”

“You’re not kidding.” She moaned through eating the second piece. When was she going to be able to do this again? With the third stick, she tapped the end against Fitz’s. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” he echoed, finally eating his in two quick bites. Jemma swirled her tongue around hers before sliding it into her mouth. Fitz squinted at his fingers as she dragged her tongue over her lips, searching for every last crumb.

He held up his hand. “Mine melted a little. I should—”

“Let’s not let that go to waste.” She put her palm about his wrist and sucked his finger into her mouth to get the chocolate. Jemma knew what she was doing. The sugar buzz she had going would go amazingly well with an orgasm. She swirled her tongue around the finger and sucked hard before slowly letting him go.

Fitz looked dazed, but he moved his hand slightly and offered his middle finger to her. She took her time as she welcomed it between her lips. Electric thrills were running through her from head to toe, and she wanted nothing more than to taste all of the brilliant, handsome man who had dropped into her life.

When she released his finger, he cupped her face with his hand. “Jemma,” he breathed, leaning towards her. She met him halfway, their lips melding together perfectly. He tasted of the Kit-Kat along with a sweetness that had to be just him. Jemma wanted all of it. All of him. Two hearts flung among the stars so they could find each other.

She tossed the quilt away and straddled his lap. Fitz groaned. His hands clasped her arse and kneaded.

“Want you, Fitz,” she murmured, snogging him roughly. It was what a kiss should be, not the spit swapping she’d done a few times before joining NASA. With Fitz, it felt like heaven. Their tongues slid together and explored. She sucked on his lip, and he nibbled at hers. It was intoxicating. She wanted to wake up this way every morning, with Fitz and kisses and—

She yipped as Fitz grasped her hips and pushed her off him so that she was standing. He stood as well and raked a hand through his hair.

Jemma tried to fist his shirt to pull him back into a kiss, but he backed away. “We need to stop, Jemma, we hardly know each other.”

“Oh, bloody screw that. I know you’re kind, generous, smart, and caring.”

His brows drew together as his expression became pained. “If we weren’t here, in the backend of absolutely bloody nowhere, you wouldn’t even look—”

“No. Don’t. Don’t do that.” Jemma’s heart sank. “Don’t tell me I don’t know my own mind. I’ve been alone, yes, but I’m not so lost that I’d jump anyone that showed up. Couldn’t you have been different than every other man I’ve known? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a girl in a hard science field? How many times I’ve been told I couldn’t be right? How many times I’ve been dismissed? And now you want to tell me I can’t decide who I want to kiss?”

Fitz looked poleaxed.

“I thought that all the hard work I’ve done here was about to be rewarded, that fate had sent me the one person I’d be compatible with. But of course, you have to tell me I can’t know what I want. Screw fate. I don’t believe in it anyway. It’s a coincidence you’re here, that’s all.” She angrily scrubbed at her eyes.

“Jemma—”

“Just be quiet. I’m going to the loo and then out to make my rounds. Hopefully, there’s not some bug waiting that’ll give me another wound to stitch up by myself. Because that’s how I do everything. By myself.”

She marched off to use the bathroom, and to splash water on her face. When she returned to the living room, she found Fitz on his cot, his face buried in a pillow. She ignored him and grabbed her spear.

Maveth never changed. Not for her.

****

He’d fucked up.

Fitz wanted to sob, but the tears wouldn’t come. He felt numb, but like he was tumbling down a very steep slope at the same time.

He’d fucked up the best thing to ever happen to him.

Jemma was too blasted smart, too self-sufficient, to ever do anything she didn’t want to. She’d looked at him, talked with him, been comforted by him, and wanted…him. Maybe she’d felt like he fit, the same way it seemed like his entire life had been waiting for Jemma to be in it.

And he’d turned it into rubbish because that’s what always happened. He messed up, and people walked away.

Maybe it was better like this, getting the hurt over with right up front instead of thinking she wanted him. When they returned to earth, she would dump him the instant she met somebody that could do more than nine pushups.

Eventually, Fitz forced himself to his feet. He folded the cots and put them to one side, then busied himself looking at the copious notes and observations Jemma had recorded. One of the notebooks on her shelf had a layer of dust on it. 

Curious, he picked it up and brushed off the dirt. Inside he found computer coding and horrendously complicated equations. He took the book to the table and sat down, trying to piece together what Jemma had been doing and eagerly waiting for her to return. He might have mucked up some things between them, but he’d bet she’d want to talk about this, because from what he’d started to put together, Jemma had been working on a way home.

****

_Earth_

Mack stared at the monolith.

“Dude,” Daisy said from beside him. “I don’t think it’s going to start talking, no matter how hard you glare at it.”

“I’m going to get him back. Fitz didn’t ask to be brought out here to analyze the monolith. I did that.”

Daisy sighed. “A rock ate him. We don’t know if he’s even alive.”

“I’m not giving up. Fitz wouldn’t.” Mack dragged a hand down his face. “Did you know he’s never even…er, that Fitz has never been in love?” He glanced at Daisy out of the corner of his eye.

She made a face. “Seriously, he’s not here, and you need to tell me his dating history?”

“Yeah, I’m just…I feel responsible for him not getting the chance.”

“I know.” Her tone had become serious. “And you’re right. It’s not time to give up, but promise me you’ll know when it is time.”

“Fine. I promise.”

Mack’s heart sank. How did you know when it’d been long enough to give up on someone?


	6. Shape of My Heart

The wind picked up sharply as Jemma jogged towards home. She’d done her usual morning routine and checks, then spent as much time as she could going and looking for bug-sign. There’d been a maybe at the distant watering hole she’d visited, but finally, she’d wasted all the time she could and needed to get back.

An approaching sandstorm, with billowing clouds of dust, made her move faster.

The front was distant, but the wind whipped her hair back, and she could make out lightning strikes amid the encroaching walls of sand. It was terrible in its beauty. She paused on the last hill crest to watch, before remembering that she wasn’t returning to an empty cave.

Someone else was there.

Joy rushed through her, followed by guilt.

During her rambling, Jemma had realized that Fitz had been at least partly right. She’d pushed things rather quickly, and her feelings weren’t settled at all when it came to him. She didn’t know him, not completely.

She did like the parts of him she did know. Mostly. Not his choice of phrasing right before she’d left.

Jemma had never been afraid to go after what she wanted. If she decided something was meant to be hers, like a doctorate or a place on a top-secret NASA team, she went after it full throttle. And she’d never been wrong in her choices. She trusted herself and her instincts. Well, Maveth hadn’t gone as she’d imagined--there was no way she could have predicted she’d be stranded on an alien planet—but she’d been chosen for the mission, and then she’d survived.

Jemma didn’t think she was mistaken now either. Like the storm rolling in, she could feel herself getting ready to fall for Fitz. There’d be no coming back from that. Her heart and mind were in agreement, but she could slow down and wait for him to catch up. He’d said such nice things about her right at first. Lovely things that made her skin prickle and warm. Things that made her not worry about whether or not he was attracted to her. And he’d returned her kiss for a few, glorious moments.

Jemma stamped the butt of her spear on the sand in determination. She’d help him see they were meant for each other.

She raced for the cave, eager to get back, hurtled through the narrow opening, and burst into the room, making Fitz jump. In the next instant, her spear clattered to the floor as Fitz enveloped her in a bear hug.

“You’re back,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted.

Jemma wanted to make an articulate response, or maybe a joke about where else would she go, but instead, she hugged him back and broke into loud sobs. Her knees gave out, and she ended up letting go and sitting down hard, her face in her hands.

“Jemma?” Fitz asked, sitting beside her. “What’s…did I do something? Well, something else?”

“No…” She waved a hand as she tried to explain the sheer wonder of him waiting for her. “I’m just…nobody has ever been so happy to see me. I’ve never come home to someone…” Another loud sob shook her. “And I’m being ridiculous about it.”

“Not ridiculous.” He gently urged her back into his arms, and she clung to him.

“And I’m the one that’s sorry,” she managed when her tears had slowed. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You were right. We’ve only just met, and I while I’m sure of myself, it doesn’t mean you are.” A horrible thought trickled through Jemma’s mind. “I don’t even know if you have someone waiting for you. I didn’t…I kissed you, and you could have a—”

“No, no, um, no.” Fitz’s expression became resigned. “Flattering you think so.” Of course she thought so. He was gorgeous and highly intelligent. She didn’t understand how he didn’t have a wife, let alone a girlfriend. The stupidity of others was her gain. “But don’t worry. And really, it’s less heartbreak this way. Nobody wants to be around me for long, so you’re saving yourself some time.”

Jemma wiped at her cheeks. Did he really think so little of himself that he imagined the only reason she wanted to be around him was because he happened to be the only man on the planet?

Jemma pressed her face into his neck, enjoying the scratchiness of his stubble. It was a huge relief to realize he hadn’t been thinking less of her when he’d pushed her away that morning, only of himself. She was certain that it would be easy for her to convince him otherwise. After a moment, she pulled back to look up into his eyes.

Her heart tripped over itself.

She’d been wrong. She wasn’t about to fall. Her own, personal storm had already hit. Jemma was in love, and what a strange feeling, to never want to be without him again.

“There’s a front moving in,” she said, attempting to be practical and not confess her feelings that second and scare him. “We’ll be protected in here, though a little extra dust will coat everything. There’ll be lightning and thunder, so don’t be alarmed.”

“I won’t,” he murmured, pushing her hair back from her face. Jemma’s eyes abruptly focused on something white stuck to the side of the cave. She looked over Fitz's shoulder. There were pages and pages of paper, all hung on the wall.

Jemma wiggled out of Fitz’s arms and rocketed to her feet. A notebook lay open on the table, and she only needed a glance at it to realize what he was working on.

“Fitz,” she said, awed. “You found my theory.”

“Yes, it’s bloody brilliant, and I think you’re right. I’ll be able to help you constrain parameters if we can—”

“It’s impossible without a computer. The one I had died.”

He shook his head. “My phone is more powerful.”

“But there’s scans and topographical detail on it we need.”

Fitz put his hands on his hips. “Then we will make the ruddy thing work.”

Jemma fell even more in love with him.

****

Fitz woke up as booming thunder echoed through the cave. He yawned and reached over to poke at his phone, relieved to see it was still the middle of the night.

Jemma shifted in his arms, muttered something about chocolate, and pressed her face tighter against his chest. He stoked a hand down her back to reassure her that he was there. Though how she slept through the noise of the storm, he had no idea.

It’d been a week of ugly storms, one after another rolling through, bringing dust, lightning, and unease. For him anyway, Jemma didn’t seem bothered.

He’d been going out with her in the mornings to check and record readings from her instruments, look for signs that the bugs were returning and then hurry back to the cave before the next storm hit to work on the math for her proposed solution, or the insides of the computer. There’d been no quick fix. He’d had to clean things out and cobble together a way to solder broken connections. An even bigger issue was power. He thought some of the problems with the desktop were based on issues with the electrical system in the cave.

He’d be working on designing a tiny wind-driven motor to generate electricity that he could store in a series of rechargeable batteries he’d repurposed from walkie-talkies. Those had never been much use to Jemma. He’d had to drain the cells first so they’d charge correctly. He’d thought about using his phone battery, but if something fried it, that’d be the end of his cell. Jemma wouldn’t forgive him if she couldn’t finish the books she’d been reading.

Fitz reached over Jemma and touched the screen again. The background wasn’t Halo any longer, but a picture of the two of them on Maveth’s surface he’d taken after explaining to Jemma what a selfie was.

He settled his arm back around her.

His second night on Maveth, they’d tried for a good fifteen minutes to sleep on separate cots, but then Jemma had sighed, gotten up, and he’d moved over. After that, they’d quit pretending either of them would rest without the other. It made things awkward for him in the morning when he woke up with a painfully hard erection smushed against Jemma’s arse, hip, thigh, or belly. So far, he didn’t think she’d noticed, and she’d never commented on his rush to the loo after waking up. He’d have a quick and always unsatisfying wank that at least let him act like a normal person around Jemma for the rest of the day.

More or less.

He pitied his past self for believing that he could draw a line around his heart, and everything would be fine. That somehow, Jemma hadn’t already made her home there. Everything between them felt effortless. They worked together like they’d been doing so for years. And she hadn’t even blinked the first time he’d contradicted her. She actually argued with him, fiercely, with evidence, until they’d reached the solution to the problem.

He’d had to go wank again after that.

Fitz knew he was helpless, irrevocably in love.

He kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes, sleep finding him despite the thunder.

****

It still wasn’t quite morning when he opened them again. Jemma was tight against his chest with her leg over his thigh. A very warm part of her pressed against a very insistent part of him.

Jemma’s breathing hitched, and her hips rolled, grinding everything down there together.

Fitz whimpered, and Jemma froze. Her face tilted up towards his. Even in the dim light, he could see she was blushing profusely.

“Uh, hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Can I ask what you’re doing?”

She rolled her eyes. “Having a bit of a feel before you wake up, and I have to be still.”

“I…I wake up before you.”

Jemma blinked once.

“Bloody hell,” he grumbled. She’d been aware of his predicament the entire time, though she apparently hadn’t minded.

“You realize this thing we’re doing, where we pretend there’s nothing between us, isn’t going to work?” she asked conversationally as if her girl-bits weren’t pressed in an incredibly distracting way against his prick. “I like you, Fitz. A lot. More every day.”

It was really difficult to argue that when she filled every sense he had. Her heat, her soft voice, the sweet, soapy scent of her skin, the sight of all the warmth in her bright eyes and shy smile. He was only missing her taste.

“Also, I’m going to explode from how attracted I am to you if you don’t hurry up and figure out that I’ve made my decision, and nothing is going to change my mind. Even your snoring. I’m always like this. I pick something, and I go for it, no matter what it takes.”

He stared at her, trying to process her words. She sounds so sure, and she knew nearly everything about him now. Even that he sometimes snored. And she still wanted him.

There was nothing left for him to argue, and he didn’t want to. It still felt hard to let her know how very much he was certain she was the love of his life.

Jemma’s smile dimmed as he didn’t move. “Fitz?”

“I love you,” he blurted, then kissed her before she could respond because he was too afraid of what she might say. He was already in so deep that if she left him when they got back to earth, it would hurt the same whether or not they’d been shagging. So he might as well enjoy every moment with her he could.

Jemma kissed back fiercely. Holding her was like trying to contain a supernova. Her hands were everywhere, her hips were rolling, and she was making noises so erotic he thought he might come just from hearing them.

She wiggled out of her trousers and knickers, and he grabbed her arse, amazed by how perfect she felt in his hand, but then she got her shirt off, and he went for her tits instead. The soft feel of her breast against his palm, with the exclamation point of her nipple pressing into him, was beyond any dream he’d ever had. Also better was that Jemma seemed just as excited about him touching her as he was, and she was determined to touch him back.

Her fingers worked open his shirt and caressed his chest and stomach, then around to stroke his back. When she grabbed his bum, his hips bucked hard, and Jemma moaned loudly. Her hands went to the front of his pants and yanked at his snap.

Fitz froze.

Jemma broke the kiss and frowned at him. “Are you alright?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he could hide. “Jemma…I…I’m going to disappoint you.”

She pressed her palm against him through his trousers. “It feels rather like you won’t.”

“No…I…” How was he supposed to form sentences right now? “I mean, I’ve never done this before.”

Jemma went from appearing puzzled to giving him a dazzling smile. “Me neither, but we’re doing terrific with quantum physics. I think we can figure this out too. And even if things are a bit off this first time, we can practice again and again.” Her brows drew together. “If you’re expecting to come quickly, I do suggest you use your fingers after to help me orgasm as well.”

“I’d be glad to. I can lick, too.” Regardless of what happened in the next few minutes, he made plans to get his face in her pussy as soon as possible.

“Good thinking.”

She finished undoing his trousers and, and pushed them and his shorts down his legs until he could kick both off. They rearranged on the narrow cot until she was under him, and he was positioned perfectly to…oh, dammit.

“Now what?” she asked dryly as he cursed and ran his hand through his hair in exasperation.

“Condom?”

“I’m taking pills formulated with birth control,” she said. “I had stopped for several years but returned to them a few months ago when I had an acne breakout. I’m glad you didn’t meet me then.”

“I don’t think a zit would put me off.”

She laughed and tugged him down to kiss her. “I love you.”

His heart soared. For now, in her arms, he was safe.

****

Jemma watched Fitz’s forearms flex as he cursed at the computer and tried not to jump him.

It’d taken them several weeks to get it to the point of almost running. Not so much because they couldn’t sort through the issues with the hardware, but more because everything kept being pushed aside—sometimes literally—so that they could shag.

She’d always thought herself as very intellectual, but it turned out all she’d been needing was a bed partner with a keen mind and generous heart, and she turned into a randy bunny.

The CRT monitor flashed as it woke up. After a moment, the Windows loading screen appeared.

Jemma cheered, and Fitz laughed.

“Okay,” he said, motioning her over. “Okay. We got this. Show me the topography map.”

Jemma took the mouse and rolled the ball over the pad until she could click the program. It opened with a planetary view, and Jemma showed Fitz how the coordinates worked and where the cave was on the surface. A lot of the sphere representing Maveth was bare, as those areas had yet to be mapped.

Side-by-side, they adjusted the map with calculations she’d made after the computer had stopped working.

The next puzzle piece was getting the coding for the portal prediction program to work. Fitz was frustrated he couldn’t easily combine the topography and prediction, but she shooed away his concerns. They could make a fancy hybrid program back on Earth.

It took several hours of tweaking, but finally, they got the portal program running and spitting out results. Jemma wrote them down, and Fitz fed them into the topography program to create a map.

“There’s not one near us for ages, is there?” she said as the data started to populate the model.

“Four months from now there’s one here,” he tapped the screen.

“Only five miles, but it’s on the other side of a chasm we can’t cross.”

“We’ll send a message through it, along with when we think we can get home. And there are portals in better spots after that. This one, ten months out, might our best bet. It looks like it’s close to where I think I came through, so a mile or two.”

“At seven months, we could reach this one,” she said. “It’s fifteen miles, and there will probably be bugs, but we could make it.”

“Let’s see how things go between now and then.” He made a few notes and powered down the computer. “And we should check our calculations.”

“We’re right, but I agree.” She tugged at his shirt. “But you have other things to take care of first.”

Fitz stood and walked her back until they bumped into a wall, where he braced his hands on either side of her and leaned in. “Wouldn’t want to neglect those things.”

His mouth met hers, and he tasted sweeter than any memory of chocolate.


	7. Because of You

_Two Months Later _

Fitz sat on the edge of the underground pool, washing Jemma’s hair while she made soft sounds of contentment.

His entire body felt buoyant, and his mind light in a way it’d never been before.

Love seemed too simple of a word for how he felt about Jemma. She was his universe, and he’d be content anywhere as long as she was beside him.

Though being completely alone with her on a distant planet where they could endlessly explore each other’s minds and bodies had quickly become Fitz’s idea of heaven. No outside worries, politics, job pressure, or other people to bother them. Just endless Jemma.

His hands slid through her hair and massaged her scalp, something he knew pleased her. She moaned in enjoyment, and the sound sent a zing through him, even though they’d already made love in the pool. And that morning. Jemma was very fond of morning sex, and he had come to see the benefits, which were mainly that he got to have sex with Jemma.

He loved all of her freckles, and her shining eyes, and her tendency to get testy about her favorite theories, especially if he didn’t seem to be on board about them. They were most of the way done with the launcher for their message back home, though they hadn’t chosen the wording for it yet, and they’d been having very lively discussions over air friction and differences between here and Earth.

He liked the friction of his hands in her hair and the scent of the soapy strands.

“There you go,” he said, his knees hugging her sides for a second before she ducked under the water to rinse the soap. Beneath the surface, she turned and rose, dripping, between his knees. She tilted her head back and kissed him, her hands warm on his thighs.

He cupped her tit, kneading roughly. Maybe he could—

Jemma caught his wrist to still his hand. “Sorry,” she said. “Too rough, I’ve been a bit sore lately.”

“Didn’t mean to hurt you.” He leaned back, studying her breasts. He reached out and traced a vein that ran dark blue under her skin. “I like your tits,” he said huskily. “Am I making them tender? Doing too much? They look…bigger? And I can see the veins better.” He caressed her side instead, heat in his cheeks at the thought he might have been too enthusiastic earlier.

Jemma’s brows together. “Fitz, those aren’t signs of overuse…they’re…” Jemma paused and looked down at her chest. “Fuck,” she whispered. Her eyes lifted to his. “I can’t…”

She pushed away from him, scrambled out of the water, wrapped a towel around herself, and hurried towards the hall. Fitz quickly dried his feet and pulled his trousers on to follow her. He found her in the kitchen, a pack of her pills open on the counter. Her face scrunched up as she smashed them into a powder, and he didn’t dare interrupt.

Jemma banged around as she hauled out a test tube rack, complete with tubes, and several different vials of reagents and chemicals.

She poured, measured, and doled out the powders. Finally, she dosed the tubes with a last chemical. Nothing happened. The tubes stayed clear. Jemma didn’t say anything, but he knew she was distraught from how her shoulders drooped. She prepped another tube. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

“Of course,” he mumbled as she disappeared down the hall to the loo. His stomach churned as he paced a line back and forth beside their cots. Something had gone wrong, and his head ached from trying to figure it out.

She returned a few minutes later, now wearing her clothes with her hair pulled up. The test tube had acquired a pink color. She set it into the rack beside the others and stared at it. “Jemma?” he asked, fear clawing at him. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m an idiot,” she replied in a muted voice.

“Never.” Fitz slid his arms around her middle, and Jemma immediately leaned back against him.

“I am. I trusted them. They stranded me here, and I still trusted them. You showed up with a story of a rock shoved into some back corner of an aircraft carrier, and I still wanted to believe that someone, somewhere, was still looking for me. I trusted the doctor who handed me the pills, told me about the redundancies and how many they were putting in the pallets of supplies sent along with us, and I trusted that what he said was true.”

“About?” Fitz felt completely lost.

“I’m pregnant, Fitz. There was never any birth control in those pills. I think they might just be over the counter vitamins. One of them looks like a b-vitamin, so that’s good.” She turned in his arms to look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

His mind was both not making sense of the words and going a million miles an hour.

“Pregnant,” he whispered.

The hair on his arms stood up. The world became too loud and too bright. He could hear the scratch of sand blowing over the roof of the cave. Smell the scent of Jemma and soap. Every nerve ending in his skin went on high alert, and he could swear he could feel atoms of air brushing him.

Fitz spun and ran for the launcher and the pages of calculations he and Jemma had made. He sat in the chair in front of the desk holding their notes. It had to work. The message had to get through. What would be best for Jemma? Walking to the further point while she was pregnant, or waiting for a closer one after the baby arrived?

He rubbed at his temples. The firing pin on the launcher wasn’t quite right and could still stick and jam. He needed to fix that, and he pushed papers to the side to find that design.

“Fitz.” Jemma’s hand landed on his shoulder, and he glanced up at her. She deserved so much more than to be stuck on this nowhere planet. “What are you doing?”

“I have to bloody grow up. You’re pregnant, and I have to get you home. This is the first step, and I don’t have the blasted thing right.” He slapped his palm on the desk. “I’m going to get you home. Both of you.”

Jemma sighed and smiled softly. “Alright, but there’s still two months until we have to depend on the launcher. Right now, I need you to hold me, because I’m scared.”

Dammit all to hell. He was doing everything wrong. He couldn’t save his family, or protect them, or…or…

“C’mon,” she coaxed, and he stood and let her pull him to the middle of the room where the cots rested. They hadn’t bothered putting them away in ages since they might need a bed at any given time.

She lay down, her still-damp hair leaving marks on her pillow, and he settled beside her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, cupping her face. “I…I…” He swallowed. Jemma most likely didn’t want to hear about how he’d failed her by not keeping his prick in his pants. “You shouldn’t be upset at yourself because you were lied to.”

“I should have tested those pills a long time ago.”

“There wasn’t a reason.” Not until he’d showed up, and they’d been busy since then.

She played with one of the buttons on the front of his shirt. “You haven’t told me what you think about the baby. We’ve never even talked about children.”

“I’m scared.” What did being a good father even mean, besides not walking out on the child?

“You're going to be amazing as a da.” The surety in her voice made him want to believe that.

“I’ll try.” He touched her belly, wondering about the little life inside. “What about you? What are you thinking?”

She bit her lip, her eyes following the path of his finger. “This is not how I hoped it’d be. I’d be dreaming of us being on Earth, maybe with a little cottage.”

“A cottage?”

“Yes, when I was a girl, my family would go on holiday to Perthshire, and I’ve always want…there’s this adorable little…” she trailed off and took a deep breath. His mind spun with the idea of being in Scotland with her, and his chest warmed at her choice. The corner of Jemma’s mouth turned up. “A home somewhere green. In Scotland. With a Scot.”

His pulse pounded so hard he was surprised Jemma couldn’t hear it. “I don’t deserve either of you.”

“Fitz,” she said crossly, looking up at him.

He leaned his forehead against hers. “As I said, I have to grow up. Spending time here, with you, has been the best my life has ever been. I hadn’t thought much beyond living in this cave with you and making love to you every time the thought crossed my mind. And here you are figuring out a whole life for us. For all of us.” His finger traced back over her shirt, over where a child they’d created grew. He closed his eyes.

“I’m rather enjoying myself too,” she said. “I simply have a lot of practice with imagining a life after Maveth. I go to sleep dreaming how things would be if I wasn’t here. And now it’s if we weren’t here.”

“How are we getting on in not here?”

“Smashingly, we have our little house that’s close enough to a village—now I’ll add in that it’s a village with excellent schools—that we can take a nice long walk to the shops on a fair day, but it’s a quick drive when it’s wet out.”

“That happens quite a bit in Scotland.”

She laughed. “We have big front and rear gardens, with a playset you designed.”

“I’m going to tell him, or her, that I made it so that the swings can go all the way around.”

“Oh, Fitz, I love you.”

He spread his palm over her belly as he caught Jemma’s lips in a soft kiss. “And I love you. We’ll get there, Jemma. I promise. We won’t raise our children on Maveth.”

“Children is it now?” Her voice was teasing, and she nipped his lip playfully. Fitz’s heart did a flip at his words. He had said that, hadn’t he? Maybe his subconscious was onto something.

“What if I want twelve?”

She paused. “Do you?”

“I want this one. Didn’t know it until you told me. I want a family, Jemma. To love. To share everything wonderful with.” His life spooled out before him, wrenched off the track of holidays spent alone, and so many nights passed with only himself for company. Now busy Christmas mornings and birthday parties packed with cake and children were in his future. His fingers trembled. If he could get Jemma home.

“Me too,” Jemma said as she hooked a leg over her hip. “Now make love to me. I promise I won’t get pregnant.”

He laughed and kissed her fiercely. His family. He’d die for them.

****

_Morning, First Portal Opening_

The two packs they were taking were sitting side by side, and when Fitz had his back turned, she lifted them. His was three times as heavy as hers, and he was insisting he carry the launcher.

Jemma knew he wanted to protect her, but this was silly. Not as silly as when he’d tried to suggest he go without her. Jemma knew the planet in a way Fitz didn’t. There was no way she would sit at home, wondering if he understood weather patterns and bug-sign. She had to go. _They_ were rescuing themselves.

“I hate to tell you this,” she said, opening both packs and transferring several of the canteens over to hers. “Again. But I’m pregnant, not helpless.”

Fitz watched in distress as she evened the loads. “I can carry it.”

Jemma rolled her eyes. Men. “I know, but I’m four months pregnant at the most, and I barely have a baby bump. I’m quite capable.”

His face softened, and he came over to snuggle her from behind, his big hands cradling the tiny bump that she did have. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

She melted at how sweet he was and marveled at her luck at somehow having the best man in the universe tossed on her doorstep. “I have a surprise before we leave. A little motivation.” She felt giddy. It’d been tough keeping her find a secret, especially with getting batteries that worked, and then she hadn’t been able to adequately test the doppler because the only subject available was her. Jemma wanted the first time the baby’s heartbeat was heard to be a moment she shared with Fitz.

From behind one of the big pots in the cupboard, she produced the doppler and the ultrasound jelly. She’d found it packed in the bottom of a medical crate, and while it wasn’t the kind meant for fetal heart tones, it would do the job nicely.

Fitz made a face. “What’s that, and how is it motivating? I know you like to sing, is it karaoke? A little _Don’t Stop Believing_?”

She tugged up her shirt, revealing the small swell of the life inside her. “Just wait.” She dumped the gel on her belly, yipping with the chill, and turned the doppler on. It didn’t take her long to move the wand to the right position. The sound of a heartbeat as fast as hummingbird’s wings filled the cave.

Warmth bloomed inside her as they tiny pulse beat. She’d fallen in love with someone, and together they’d made an entirely new person that she would also love. Jemma felt certain she already did. Her baby that she’d one day hold in her arms.

Fitz, face echoing her awe, crossed the room and kneeled before her, setting a warm hand on her belly. “That’s her?” He’d decided the baby was a girl, and she didn’t argue, though statistically, there was an equal chance it was a boy. Well, maybe. A lot of factors went into sperm production, and the likelihood of….she shook her head. It didn’t hurt if he wanted to think it was a little girl

Jemma put her hand over Fitz’s. “That’s her. And she sounds robust.” A knot eased in her chest. There was another, muffled sound from the doppler.

“What was that?”

“Her kicking, I think she’s telling us to hurry up.” Jemma reluctantly turned the doppler off and set it aside while Fitz sprang to his feet. They had to get going to make the portal on time. Both to send the message, and to make sure their calculations were correct.

They shouldered their packs, and Fitz took the launcher while Jemma fisted her spear.

Outside, the day was clear, the two moons hanging heavy in the sky. She shielded her eyes but couldn’t see any sign of bugs. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. If you assumed that, you’d be dead.

Fitz consulted their map, and they headed away from the cave, the sand dry and giving easily beneath their feet. The wind was gentle, only stirring tiny eddies of dust.

For Maveth, it was a nice day to take a walk.

****

_Earth_

Mack stared at the monitors as they flicked through the base’s security cameras. Night watch was boring.

The monolith appeared for a moment, and Mack winced as guilt hit him. The image disappeared, replaced with one of the training room, but the feeling in his chest lingered.

There’d been no progress on the monolith. Mack had found nothing, and he’d called in every favor he’d had. The stone was death.

Fitz was gone before he’d really started to live, and had died waiting on a love that had never arrived. Mack dragged a hand down his face, and his gut ached. The guy had been safe in his tiny workshop in New York, why had Mack dragged him out of it? Fitz would be fine right now if Mack had left him alone. He’d be playing Halo and complaining like always.

Coulson wanted to wait to tell his mother, all she knew right now was that Fitz was on a top-secret mission that could last up to six months.

Mack had volunteered to make the call.

He sat forward in his seat, the desk chair creaking loudly, and sighed. He’d lost friends before, being a SHIELD agent made that inevitable, but this felt different. There was no body. No easily reportable cause of death. Fitz would have probably had something funny to say about the entire situation, but Mack couldn’t think of a single joke.

The rotation of the cameras returned to the monolith. A glimmer from the case caught Mack’s eye.

Mack sat upright and paused the view. That hadn’t been there earlier. “What the…” Mack rapidly clicked keys, bringing up the video from the camera. His hand shook as he pressed play.

The rock was solid, it turned liquid for twenty seconds, and when it reformed, there was something else in the case.

All traces of sleepiness vanished as Mack slammed his hand on the button that would lock down the base and wake everyone up.

Three hours later, a robot usually used for disarming bombs wheeled into the chamber, Mack piloting. Hunter leaned over his shoulder, and Daisy stood beside him.

It took five tries to unlatch the door, and as the robot’s arm nudged it open, something rolled out. It tinked as it hit the floor. Everyone held their breath, but nothing happened, and finally, Mack turned the robot’s cameras towards the object.

“Is that a ruddy bottle?” Hunter asked, peering at the screen. Mack focused the camera better. “With a note inside it? I can see handwriting.”

Mack pushed the chair he was sitting in back, nearly running over Hunter, and headed for the monolith’s containment room. His mind fizzed, and energy crackled through him at the possibility of what that note could mean.

“Mack!” Coulson called, running after him. “You’re breaking the rules.”

“They’re my damn rules.”

Coulson didn’t try to stop him as he opened the door to the room and strode in. Mack paused to latch the door to the monolith itself, the new, stronger lock catching easily, before moving the robot out of the way and grabbing the bottle.

The clear glass was light in his hands, and the paper came out easily. He couldn’t catch his breath as he unrolled it.

He had to read the message three times to make any sense of it. A planet near the outer edge of the galaxy. A NASA mission, possibly directed by HYDRA, that had stranded a woman named Jemma Simmons ten years ago. And now Fitz was with her.

Fitz wasn’t dead.

The note listed the earliest possible time Fitz and Jemma could return through the monolith and followed that with a second possible time. If they couldn’t make either, Fitz would send another message. He begged Mack to have the sand from the jar analyzed, and there were neat equations and diagrams, written in another hand, that provided further explanation. They said that they were well, but looked forward to coming home. The handwriting switched again as Fitz wrote that he couldn’t wait to have that corner piece of cake with Mack.

It was a code of sorts, to make sure that Mack knew it was Fitz who’d written the letter.

Turbo was alive and kicking, and sciencing the hell out of whatever situation he was in. Good for him.

The other person, Jemma, had provided contact information for her parents.

Mack had to know that this was all real. He pulled his cell out and dialed the number. The phone rang, and Mack belatedly tried to do the math as to what time it was in England. Late morning, maybe.

“Hello?” asked a soft feminine voice.

“Mrs. Simmons?”

“Yes?”

“This is going to sound odd, but I’m agent Mackenzie, with SHIELD. And I need to ask you about your daughter.”

The gentle voice became laced with steel. “She’s dead, Mr. Mackenzie.”

“Can you please tell me her name and how she died?”

“Terrific morning to reopen that wound.”

“Please. It’s important.”

There was a sigh. “Jemma was a very bright girl. Two doctorates by the age of sixteen. I think you lot tried to recruit her, but she decided to go with NASA. She died several months later during a training exercise.”

“Was there a body?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did they return her body to you?” Mack’s palms were sweating.

“That’s really beyond—”

“Please, just tell me.”

“No. The accident was fire-related and there was nothing to return.” The clip words sounded like music to Mack’s ears. “Why,” the woman demanded. “Are you asking me this?”

“Because what you were told was false. I’m holding words written by your daughter in my hands. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but I’m going to bring her home.”

“How—”

“No time for that, but thank you. It’s not going to be easy. Give us six months.” He ended the call and looked up to see Phil glowering at him.

“You might have just upended that poor woman’s world for no reason,” Coulson said.

Mack ignored the dig. He was going to do this. Fitz and this Simmons girl would get home.

Phil sighed and held up his cell. A picture of a young woman with a wide smile and bright eyes filled the screen. Her hair framed her face in soft, brown curls. “That’s astronaut Jemma Simmons. At sixteen.”

“She looks…smart, and probably less cheerful after ten years on an alien planet.” Mack started to roll the note up, but a hastily scrawled message on the back made him pause. “There’s something else here.”

Coulson leaned close. “Jemma will need immediate emergency medical attention,” he read slowly. “Have it ready.”

Mack’s heart plummeted as he shared a glance with Coulson. Maybe all Mack could return to Jemma’s parents in the end would be her body.


	8. In The End

Sand crunched between Fitz’s teeth and sweat-slicked his palm, but he didn’t let go of Jemma’s hand as they crested a dune. They were nearly home, the cave less than a mile away, and while he very badly wanted a drink, he didn’t want to drain the last of their water. Jemma and the life she carried needed it much more than him.

They paused, panting, at the top of another dune. His heart leaped as he recognized the rock formations that meant safety. Their message had gone through, and hopefully, Mack would be waiting for them on the other side of the monolith when Fitz and Jemma arrived.

“Here.” He pulled the canteen from his shoulder and gave it to Jemma. He knew how tired she must be when she simply took it and gulped down the water. The next time they were traveling she would be so much more pregnant, and they would have so much further to go. Fear prickled along his spine at all the what-ifs.

Jemma lowered the canteen and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Almost there.” Her voice was faint, and his stomach lurched.

“Are you okay?” He cupped her face.

She smiled. “Yes, just tired. I’m planning to crawl into bed and staying there until I have to pee very, very badly.”

“That’ll be in two seconds.” He leaned in, capturing her water-damp lips in a kiss.

Jemma leaned into him for a moment, but then jerked away. “Something moved. Between us and the cave. We have to go now.” Her spear rose. Fitz hurried to keep up with her as she scuttled down the side of the dune. The gravel of the flat plain between them and home ground under his boots as he ran, and Maveth’s dry air burned in his lungs.

They rounded the last bend, and Fitz screamed as he grabbed at Jemma’s shirt to pull her behind him.

A bug, its four legs ending in sharp points, turned towards them. Its curved, deadly mandibles clicked harshly.

“It’s just one,” Jemma murmured. “I can take just one.”

“It’s an eight-foot-tall, bloody—”

“I can take just one. I learned how, after watching it kill.” She looked up at him. “It’s okay.”

His hands formed trembling fists.

The scrape of the bug’s legs against the ground snapped his attention back to it. Jemma dropped her pack and pushed past him.

“Jemma!” he shouted.

The bug roared in response, its brown carapace shivering and clacking. Jemma, Fitz’s entire world, held her spear with both and advanced step by step towards the creature. The tip dipped and swung, never remaining in the same place for more than a second.

The creature seemed confused by the action, raising and lowing itself on its multi-jointed legs. 

Fitz had to do something. His pregnant girlfriend was calmly advancing on a deadly alien creature while he was just standing around like a ninny. The bug hissed and thrust a foreleg at Jemma, which she easily dodged. It did it again, but something squiggled in Fitz's brain. With the third easily telegraphed strike, the niggle in his brain grew. The bug was balancing on two legs and twisting its body around, preparing to strike at Jemma with a back leg.

The time between one ragged breath and the next increased as everything seemed to slow. Fitz bent down, retrieving a rock. It fit smooth and heavy into his palm.

“Hey, you bloody bastard,” he screamed, launching the rock with enough force to make his arm burn. It smacked the bug’s side, and it dropped its back leg and twisted towards Fitz, screeching. Jemma used the distraction, running forward and sliding on her back under the bug while thrusting upwards with the spear.

The bug roared, and Fitz’ heart nearly stopped as Jemma rolled and scurried out of the way. The creature teetered for a moment, then crashed to its side. Fitz wrinkled his nose as thick black ichor leaked from the bug’s underside.

Jemma, panting and grinning, trotted up to stand next to him. Fitz wanted to be angry with her, but she’d just saved all their lives, and—his stomach turned. “What an amazing smell you’ve discovered.”

She started to laugh at the joke, but then the color drained from her face. She bent over and heaved up the water she’d drunk. Fitz squished down the rumblings from his insides and took her arm. “We should get inside.” He put his other hand over his nose and mouth.

“Yes, before others come to eat.”

He didn’t want to think about anything eating…that. “Your spear?”

“I can make another.” Jemma’s lips pulled back in a grimace before she heaved again.

Fitz half-dragged, half-carried Jemma to the narrow passage in the rock, picking up her pack on the way. She slipped through on her own, and once inside immediately headed for the water container beside the sink.

Dropping their packs, he followed her. “Are you okay? You haven’t had morning sickness this entire time…and, uh, thank you, by the way…for the saving.” Shame dragged claws through him. That should have been him protecting her, not the other way around.

“You nearly threw up too,” she said, spitting in the sink and handing in the water to him. “My mum said she never had a moment of nausea with me, and that she always hoped I’d be as lucky.” Her face pulled tight for a moment, but then she looked at him. He quickly took a drink to hide whatever expression was on his face, but it was too late. “And whatever you’re thinking, stop it. That bug was trying to distract me. You gave me an opening. We did that together.”

Fitz fell in love with her all over again. He set the water down and swept her into a hug. The nagging voice faded as he held her, warm and solid, in his arms. “We did. But let’s not do it again.”

****

_Three Months Later_

Jemma woke up freezing. She felt around for the blanket, her patting becoming frantic when she found only empty space where Fitz should be. Fear flooded her. She’d made him up. He didn’t exist except as a figment of her broken mind. She was alone, alone, always—

A sharp pain poked her left side, and she gasped. Baby. Jemma’s shoulders sagged as she rubbed the spot. She wasn’t imagining being seven months pregnant, which meant Fitz had to be around somewhere, probably in the loo. The baby kicked and wiggled, finding a rib and pushing.

“You’ll be out soon enough,” she said, sitting up and yawning. “No need to fight over it now.” The baby pushed again, and what appeared to be an elbow poked out for a second before Jemma’s little one shifted to a position that didn’t involve any ribs. Baby seemed to be a little night owl.

Fitz hadn’t returned yet, and worry curled through her chest, even though she was certain he was perfectly fine. She still got to her feet and padded towards the hallway. There was a dim light on in the cave with the pool. Jemma trailed a hand over the rock wall as she walked, the hard surface rough against her fingers. Cold pricked her legs. As her belly had grown, clothing had become a problem. She had on a man’s button-up that covered her most of the way to her knees, but pants were a problem and involved string at this point, so she didn’t bother with them unless she had to.

In all her years on Maveth, she’d never once dreamed that maternity clothes were something she’d desperately wish for.

Fitz was indeed in the bathroom, but not doing anything Jemma had been expecting. He was shirtless, sweat dripping, as he counted out a series of push-ups. His spear lay beside him on the ground, along with several hand-sized rocks, though she only gave those a cursory glance before focusing on how the muscles of his back were working.

She licked her lips. “Fitz, what are you doing?”

He dropped with a yelp before rolling over to look up at her. “Uh, I’m…working out?” It sounded like a question.

“I can see that, but why?”

He pushed himself up to sit cross-legged on the floor and used his shirt to wipe his face. “Did I wake you up?”

“Your child playing footie with my insides woke me up, and just tell me why you’re doing calisthenics in the middle of the night.”

Fitz’s gaze met hers briefly, dropped to her belly, and then darted away to the water of the pool. “I can’t sleep much,” he muttered.

“Oh, Fitz.” She took a step towards him, but he held up a hand.

“Let me finish. I can’t sleep much, and it’s going to fall on me to protect you when we’re making for the portal.”

“I—”

“I know you can take care of yourself, but you’ll be eight months pregnant. Even you are going to have to admit you’ll need help.”

She nodded because he was right. She might hate that he was right, but it was a hard truth she’d been facing. “I do.”

He looked surprised for a second, and his gaze met hers. “So, every time I wake up during the night, I come here and work myself until I can’t do anything besides sleep.”

She nodded, then grinned. “I thought it was my hormones making you look more…I don’t know, masculine, to me.” Pregnancy had sent her sex drive into high gear, and Fitz had happily obliged her every whim. Lately, she’d been licking and biting at his biceps and shoulders, and she was glad to have an explanation as to why.

He scratched at the beard on his chin and gave her a lopsided smile. “It’s not all the fur?” He’d stopped shaving, and Jemma had rather enjoyed the various levels of stubble he’d gone through before his beard had fully come in, which was also a good look on him. Coupled with the thick curls on his head, he did seem to be working on a mountain man style.

“I like that too.”

His smile grew, and he ducked his head.

“Do you have a while left, or are you nearly done?”

“I’m about halfway through my regular routine.”

“Why don’t you finish up? I’ll make some early breakfast for us.”

A line appeared between his brows for a second, but then he nodded and jumped to his feet. Jemma had to turn her back before she gave in and tackled him. She had a different idea for the morning, an idea that’d been brewing since they’d written the note to Fitz’s friend. Fitz being occupied with his workout gave her the perfect opportunity to surprise him.

Jemma detoured into one of the supply rooms and pulled open a dust-covered container. She’d wondered, as she’d excitedly watched the pallets being lowered down into that black pool that led to a distant planet, why they’d needed so many supplies, and had dreamed of going between the two planets for decades for research.

The actual reason probably had more to do with HYDRA putting up a smokescreen to cover whatever their true intent had been, and she’d been part of that screen. Living could be her only revenge. She’d been meant to perish, and instead, she’d survived, kept records, and now carried life. And she loved. Enough to find the vacuum sealed and irradiated packet of cake mix and icing sugar she’d never had a reason to use before. Maybe it’d been meant for someone’s birthday, but that didn’t matter now.

The other reason she hadn’t attempted the cake earlier was that she didn’t have a stove. Baking something on a burner hadn’t been a challenge she’d wanted when she already had so many.

Jemma measured and mixed the vanilla cake, which thankfully only needed water, and put it the heat. The scent of the batter was rich with artificial vanilla, and she couldn’t stop herself from greedily licking the spoon.

As the cake tried to bake, she made an icing, of sorts, from the sugar. It was runny and tasted odd without milk, but it was still sweet, which was all that really mattered. She licked that spoon too.

Fitz appeared, rubbing his hair with a towel. His shirt was still missing, but Jemma suspected he’d done that on purpose after she’d complimented him. She’d found he thrived on approval, and it gave her a thrill whenever she sparked some new confidence in him.

His nose twitched. “What are you making?”

“Cake.”

“Huh?”

“I had one box of mix, and I’ve been wanting to surprise you with it since you wrote Mack about cake.”

He chuckled and walked over to her. “That was the sum of my leave plans. I was going to eat buffet food and have a piece of cake.” His arm slipped around her and pressed a kiss to her lips. Desire rushed through her. “I got something so much better,” he whispered.

Jemma put a hand on his chest. “That a good line, but I’m not burning the only cake on Maveth because you’re horny.” Fitz scowled, making her laugh. “It’s nearly done, please bring us plates. I apologize because it’s a round cake, so there are no corner pieces.”

“Or they’re all corner pieces.”

It was a rare burst of optimism, and warmth filled her at how comfortable Fitz appeared, with himself and her. “I like that idea, all corners, even if it doesn’t work mathematically.” Fitz rolled his eyes. She turned the burner off and cut into the cake. It was dense, too brown on the bottom, and not done enough in the middle. Fitz didn’t seem to care as he eagerly took his slice after she’d slathered it in icing.

The sat across from each other at the little table, their knees touching, and ate greedily.

“It doesn’t taste bad,” she said as she licked crumbs off her fork.

“Best cake ever.” Fitz leaned back in his chair, his eyelids heavy. “But I don’t think I’m done.”

“Do you want another slice?”

He shook his head, but his mouth twitched like he was trying to hide a smile. “That’s not what I want to eat.”

Her cheeks warmed. He was adorable. “Is it not?”

Fitz stood and walked around the table to take her hands and pulled her to her feet. He slid a hand over her belly, and lost the battle with his mouth, smiling widely. “Is Baby behaving? Can we…” He nodded towards the cots.

Jemma trailed a finger down his arm, her breath catching. “Please.”

He kissed her, tongue sliding into her mouth and making her moan as he backed her towards the cots. Her legs bumped it, and she sat down, Fitz followed, going to his knees between her legs. His hands stroked her belly. “Can I taste, Jemma?”

She opened her thighs wider. “Please.”

He pulled her knickers down and pressed her gently to lie back. She couldn’t see him around the swell of her baby bump, but she could feel him and how he settled between her legs, then his breath on her thigh. The kisses were soft and wet, and his beard scratchy. Her fingers fisted the sheets, and she held her breath, waiting. Jemma trusted him to do exactly what she needed.

****

_A Month Later, The Next Portal Opening_

“We’re being followed,” Jemma said, raising her hand to shade her eyes. She had her feet firmly planted in the sand of a dune, hoping her exhaustion hadn’t started to show yet.

“I know.” Fitz didn’t look up from his mobile, where he was checking that they were still on the right route. “Started about three miles back.”

That’d been before she had noticed the shapes moving in the distance. Dammit. Pain tightened around her middle, and Jemma carefully breathed through it. Five miles ago she’s started to suspect that the tightening in her belly wasn’t the false labor pains she’d been having for several weeks. Hiking through the rough terrain had pushed her into labor. She’d drunk more water, willing the contractions to end, but it hadn’t helped.

Fitz couldn’t know. Sweat clung to him, and every line of his face and body was tight with stress. Adding that the baby was on the way wouldn’t change any of it. They had to reach the damn portal.

Jemma tilted her head back to look at the two moons hanging close to Maveth’s surface. It was beautiful, she supposed. A sight very few people had known. She hated it. All of it. Every vast landscape and mote of blue light. She hadn’t, not until now, not until she thought it might kill her child.

Fitz thrust the phone back into her hands. “This way,” he grunted, setting off with his spear in his hands. She had hers too, for whatever good it would do. There was no way she could be fast enough right now to kill a bug. The mobile went into a padded pouch strung around her neck. She’d insisted she carry it because while it’d been impossible to take her decade of carefully made records with them, Jemma had used the phone to carefully photograph every page. All her data in one place, finally about to be taken home.

Leaving the cave had been more emotional than she expected. There’d been no packing to do. Jemma had made up their cots neatly, though it was unlikely any human would see any of the things that had sustained Jemma for so long ever again. It’d just sit there, waiting. She’d known when she’d left either they made the portal, or they died. There wouldn’t be any going back.

Fitz took her hand once they were at the foot of the dune, his head swiveling as he tugged her along. The pace was faster, and her legs and lungs burned with the effort.

“It’s not much further,” he said.

Her feet moved, somehow, as the contractions came and went.

Her vision narrowed until it was nothing but the dusty plane, scattered with rocks, and all she could feel was Fitz’s damp palm and the pain.

She stumbled over a rock, going to her knee and crying out. A contraction hit hard, and she couldn’t rise.

“Jemma,” Fitz urged, pulling at her. “Jemma, Jemma!” The last was shrill.

She fought to her feet and raised her head. There were three bugs, bobbing on their pointed legs.

“The portal?” she croaked between dry lips.

“Do you see the pillar of rock that’s standing separate from the rest of the ridge?” He pointed past the bugs. The spire sat a quarter-mile distant. It might as well be a hundred miles. She nodded. “There. The foot of that.”

“What are we going to do?”

Fitz shrugged, the movement casual. “I’m going to fight. You’re going to stay low behind the dune to our right and run when I tell you too.”

“No.” Her heart shattered. This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t. The inevitableness of it all shone in his eyes like he’d known this would happen. Like he’d accepted it.

“Jemma, I love you.” He swept her into a hug, his eyes never leaving the bugs as they hissed and chittered at each other. “But I need you to get through that portal. Tell Baby how much their Da loved them. You’re going home, Jems.”

A contraction caught her, stealing her words as she gasped. Fitz’s eyes dropped for a heartbeat to her belly. He knew. She could see it on his face that he felt way her belly tightened. “I love you,” she choked out and turned away before she couldn’t. She raced to the shoulder-high dune, rabbiting over it and hunching to hide herself.

“You bloody Starship Troopers-looking bastards want me?” Fitz yelled. The bugs answered with a roar.

Jemma bit back a sob and moved as fast as she could, the dry air of Maveth tearing at her throat as she panted. The taste of copper bloomed, and she fell to her knees near the end of the dune. There was still a stretch of ground between her and the pillar.

A scream from Fitz had her covering her mouth. Her tears turned the dust caked on her face to mud.

“Now, Jemma! Run!”

She got her feet under her and bolted, arms around her middle. The bugs bellowed. She reached the pillar, muffling a scream as a contraction tightened around her. She looked back as the sand began to swirl at her feet.

Fitz, dear, brave, Fitz, still fought. Two of the bugs lashed at him. Bright red blood soaked his shirt. The third bug had turned and was skittering on its legs towards her.

Jemma stared, tears blurring the browns and blues of Maveth into a formless wash of color, a red spot at the center.

The ground disappeared, and Jemma’s stomach lurched as she fell.

And then she was nowhere at all.


	9. I Want You Back

The gun rested heavily on Mack’s shoulder. He didn’t move it as the warning lights kicked on, even though the other SHIELD operatives raised their rifles, Hunter included. May stood on his other side, arms crossed. Sirens blared, loud in the containment zone. The medics on standby covered their ears until the sound abruptly cut off, and the warning lights changed to red.

Daisy, standing on the hood of an SUV, trembled. “Mack, I can—"

The monolith shuddered and liquified, contained in an open-mouthed pit.

Mack yelled as a hand shot up from the blackness, and he ran forward, grabbing it and hauling the owner out of the portal.

A sobbing, heavily pregnant woman, covered in sand and dust, ended up in his grasp. “Jemma Simmons?” he asked.

“Yes, you have to help him. Help Fitz. Please. They’re going to kill him.” She looked around the room. “Where are the mechanisms to keep…”

A shockwave rippled through the room as Daisy let her powers loose. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Go.”

Mack pushed Jemma into the hands of a waiting medic and charged for the portal. May grabbed a gun from the nearest agent and followed. Mack jumped, panicked for a second as he passed through the portal, then rolled as he hit the ground.

“Holy bleeding _fuck_,” Hunter gasped as he stumbled to his knees besides Mack.

“Agreed.” The place looked like a nightmare, and he reached out to pat Hunter’s back, beyond glad to have a familiar face.

May streaked past them, charging across the dusty ground. Mack climbed to his feet. He pulled Hunter up, and they ran after May.

What they were charging towards didn’t make sense. Huge creatures that didn’t look like they should be alive roared and struck towards a blood-covered figure in their midst.

“What the fuck are those?” Hunter said.

Mack ignored the creatures and focused on the man fighting them.

Fitz.

Mack watched his friend hurl a spear with a shout at one of the creatures as it reared up on its hind legs. The spear struck, black ichor flying. The animal went down.

“I killed you, you bastard!” Fitz yelled, going to his knees. “I won. Jemma made it. I won.” His shoulders slumped, and the other creatures surged towards him. But May and Hunter were there, the bullets ripping into the caprices of the remaining two nightmares.

The smell railroaded Mack and made him stumble. His stomach lurched at the necrotic stink, but he forced the reaction aside as he grabbed Fitz’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “We don’t have much time!” Mack yelled at Fitz’s stunned face.

Fitz’s mouth, partially hidden beneath thick facial hair that Mack had no idea Fitz had been capable of growing, opened and closed. Fresh blood ran down his arm. Mack didn’t have time to let him regroup. He was probably going into shock from the blood loss. And Mack could see in Fitz’s eyes that he’d been expecting to die. He’d bought Jemma time, to get herself, and presumably what was her and Fitz’s child—Mack didn’t have the bandwidth to process that at the moment—through the portal.

“Jemma’s safe!” Mack yelled. “You did it. Now c’mon. I didn’t risk my life for you to be an idiot who can’t remember how legs work.”

Annoyance flashed on Fitz’s face.

Thank god.

Mack kept a hand on Fitz’s arm as they ran for the portal, keeping him upright when he stumbled. Mack could feel Fitz’s muscles spasming and then stiffing as Fitz fought to keep going. May dropped through the portal, followed by Hunter.

Fitz teetered on the edge, muttering something about it shouldn’t be still open as his eyes rolled up, Mack didn’t know if Fitz was taking in the landscape one last time or if he was about to faint. Mack didn’t care. He was done with Maveth. With a rough shove, he pushed Fitz through the portal and jumped after him.

****

Everything felt wrong. The ground pulled at Fitz strangely. The cacophony of voices around him grated against his ears. A girl—Daisy, it was Daisy—toppled over into…Coulson’s arms. Fitz’s vision went fuzzy, and he swayed.

A voice rose over the others.

“Fitz!”

Jemma!

Her cry broke off into a pained sound, and fear spiked through him. He forced himself upright. “Jemma!”

“Fitz!”

He pushed himself, one step after another, towards her.

A hand landed on his shoulder. “Hey. You need—”

His heart thundered. Something had to be wrong. They were keeping him from Jemma. Fitz tried to pull away from the hand clamping him, but when it didn’t budge, he spun and slammed his fist into whoever thought they could keep him from her.

The grip loosened, and Fitz took off, running towards the sound of her wails. He pushed people out of his way until he could see her. Her face was streaked with dirt, she was crying, and holding out her hands to him. His Jemma. He rushed to her, nearly falling as he hit the gurney she was lying on.

Panting, he cupped her face and leaned his forehead against hers.

“That was a hell of a right hook, Turbo.” Mack’s voice was amused. “And now I see why you asked for emergency medical equipment.”

The words weren’t making much sense. Fitz had asked for…what?

“That’s what you scribbled on the back of the paper.” Jemma kissed him softly, then broke off and groaned. “We’re having a baby.”

That he knew. Baby. “We are.” He fumbled a hand to her belly. It was tight under his palm. Contraction. On Maveth, he’d felt it too. Jemma hadn’t said anything. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t matter. We had to keep going.”

“Jemma.” His heart beat like a trapped animal inside his chest.

“Sir,” a woman in a white jacket said. “Unless you want her to have that baby in front of everyone, we need to move her.”

The woman started to push the gurney, and he stumbled. He didn’t know where they were taking his family. He’d never find them here. He couldn’t let…the earth tilted a little sideways, but he grabbed for Jemma’s ankle and the knife hidden there.

Unsheathing it, he turned, nearly fell, but kept ahold of the blade. “You can’t have her.”

“Fitz,” Mack said, grabbing his wrist.

Fitz gaped. “What are you doing? They’re taking her.” He tried to struggle, but Mack’s hold was impossibly strong.

“Stop.” Mack plucked the knife from his fingers. “Get Jemma to the medical bay. I’ll bring him, and we’ll take care of them in the same place.” Mack put his arm around Fitz. “I don’t know how you’re still standing.”

“Jemma,” Fitz croaked, his legs heavy as he followed the gurney. Mack had promised…promised…

“Yes,” Mack said, his voice comforting. “We’re staying with Jemma.”

“Baby?”

“It’s all going to be okay.”

****

Jemma could barely tear her eyes away from the perfect, tiny, face of her daughter. Adara Fitzsimmons. She had Jemma’s hair and her father’s blue eyes and appetite. Currently, her rosy little mouth was clamped around Jemma’s nipple as she nursed with gusto. Traveling through a hole in the universe, and being born, didn’t seem to have been any deterrent to latching onto Jemma’s breast. Adara really was her father’s daughter. 

Jemma dropped her hand to comb through Fitz’s hair. He’d fallen asleep sitting in the chair beside the bed, and ended up leaning on the mattress with his head cradled on his crossed arms. A third unit of blood dripped into an IV in his arm. He’d barely let the nurse put in the needle, refusing to leave Jemma’s side.

Adara had been born less than two hours after their arrival. Their return home.

A home she’d missed, but that now felt alien and strange.

It was bright, loud, and uncomfortably sand-free. So many people. Intellectually she understood that it was only a handful of doctors and nurses and that the multitude of lights, humming, and beeping scraping against her senses were regular background noise but after a decade of Maveth, where her life could depend on interpreting the direction the wind blew or hearing the skittering of a bug’s legs outside her cave, the cacophony of everyday life left her raw and overwhelmed. 

The staff had turned off nearly all the lights and monitoring equipment, which let the soft sound of Fitz’s snores and the gentle sucking of Adara’s nursing fill the room.

A knock at the door had her reaching for a knife that wasn’t there. Adara fussed at the interruption and nuzzled at Jemma’s breast until she found her dinner again. A second, quieter knock sounded.

“Come in,” she said, proud her voice didn’t waver.

Mack, who they’d written the note to what felt like a lifetime ago, opened the door and edged into the room. “Hey, I just wanted to check on you two, er, three. It’s been a big day.” He had a swollen eye from where Fitz had punched him. It didn’t seem to be bothering Mack, and she didn’t know if she should apologize on Fitz’s behalf.

“Yes.” Her social skills were rusty. She tried to figure out what Mack wanted to know. He must be worried about his friend. “Um, Fitz is doing better.”

The corner of Mack’s lips ticked up. “I’m glad to hear it. I brought his phone back. The data’s all safe. Those records are a gold mine. Years worth of work to understand any of it.” He held up a small rectangle with pink edges. “I got you a phone too.”

“A mobile? For me?”

Mack handed both mobiles to her, and she set Fitz’s battered one beside him, the screen flashing up the picture of the two of them on Maveth. “Thank you,” she whispered, turning her own on. Adara let go of her breast, her face relaxed in sleep, and Jemma rearranged the hospital gown she wore to cover herself. Her old shirt would have been better for nursing, but it was lying folded on a crate tens of thousands of lightyears away.

“I put your parents’ information in the contacts,” Mack said. “I started to call them, but…maybe it’s best if they hear from you.”

“Ah.” She’d imagined the moment she told them she was alive so many times, but making the call sounded so much more frightening. “Um, soon.” She set the phone down on the blanket and put her hand over Fitz’s. He shifted slightly, turning his arm so he could lace his fingers with hers. He was awake but didn’t want to talk to Mack. She could understand, it wasn’t easy to talk to anyone at the moment.

Mack nodded. “Let me know if you need me to make that call.”

A knot eased inside her. “Thank you. I haven’t decided yet, but it’s good to know I have a choice.”

“I understand.” Mack smiled again. “Y’know, Fitz told me once that he didn’t think the girl for him was on this planet. Cracks me up that he was right.”

Jemma felt guilty that she was so glad nobody had seen how much he was worth. Because then she wouldn’t have him. Wouldn’t have Adara. “I never believed I’d find someone I could love so much,” she said, then blinked as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Sorry, hormones. I keep crying.” Fitz’s fingers squeezed hers. “What’s going to happen to us, Mack?”

“What do you want to happen?”

“A home.” The word spilled out of her. She wanted a safe place where the three of them could just live and figure out how this world worked.

“I’ll get on that, and, um, we’re all real happy you’re here.”

“Eventually, I will be too.”

****

Jemma examined herself in the full-length mirror. She had a simple blouse and jeans on, and socks with tiny microscopes on them that Daisy had given her. Her eyes were tired, and a little red because she kept sobbing over how much she loved Fitz and Adara.

The SHIELD therapist told her to not blame herself for not immediately feeling like she was where she belonged. It was okay to hate Maveth and to miss her cave.

Behind her, Fitz cooed at Adara as he changed her nappy.

Oh, bother, tears again. Jemma wiped her cheeks and went to sit on the floor beside them.

“She’s got a healthy digestive system,” Fitz said, snapping up Adara’s outfit.

“I’d started cutting up sheets,” Jemma said. “In case we couldn’t leave. Seems much easier to have these disposable ones.”

Fitz lifted Adara into his arms and cuddled her against his chest. “It would have been a lot of washing. I don’t know how my mum did it.” He scooted so his side pressed against hers.

“I don’t even know what my mum used.”

“You could ask.”

She’d been putting off calling for nearly two weeks, and Fitz had seemed to settle on gentle encouragement. He’d called his mum, who’d been over the moon about Adara. Jemma’d even started texting with his mother, sending pictures of Adara, and having very short conversations. The woman had to be a saint with how sweet and patient she was.

Jemma’s favorite picture, one of Fitz smiling down at Adara, was her background photo on her mobile now. It made her smile every time she looked at it.

“I need to talk to them,” Jemma said, though the gnawing worry in her chest tried to tell her otherwise. She pulled her mobile out and brought up the contact list. “It’s a decent time there now, isn’t it?”

“I think so.” Fitz put an arm around her. “I’m here for you.”

Her finger paused over the dial button. “You almost weren’t.”

“I know, but I’m not going to apologize. I’d do the same every time, but I am glad I’m holding my daughter. That I can do this.” He kissed her temple. “I’m glad Mack found us the perfect place, just like you wanted. Do you want to look at the pictures again after you talk to your mum?”

Jemma tilted her head to squint up at him. He’d shaved since coming back, but now his stubble was coming back in. She liked the scruffy look. It made him more like her Fitz. “I’d like that. Only a couple more weeks of quarantine.”

“I’m going to get the biggest cheeseburger.” Fitz licked his lips. She bumped his side with her elbow. “Don’t tell me you don’t want something from a drive-through.”

“I’ve been eating my weight in salad. Nothing fresh for ten years.” She couldn’t get enough. Radishes were divine. Fitz gave her a look. “I might want a chocolate milkshake,” she conceded. 

“We’ll get you ten.”

Jemma rolled her eyes, not that a milkshake didn’t sound good. Nobody had ever told her how ravenous breastfeeding made you. “One.” She unlocked the screen to her mobile again and dialed.

The line connected and rang.

She kept her breathing even and her eyes on Fitz as he whispered and kissed Adara’s cheek. He’d been meant to be a father.

“Hello?” said a voice Jemma hadn’t thought she’d ever hear again.

She could hardly speak. “Mum?”

“Oh, my…oh…Jemma? Is that you.”

“It’s me, mum.”

“Oh…your father…” There was a noise of a hand over the mouthpiece and her mum shouting for her dad. “He’s coming. Jemma…what happened. They said you were dead.”

“I…I…I was alone, far away, for a long time. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Jemma.” She could tell her mum was crying. Jemma didn’t know what to say and looked to Fitz, who shrugged and placed Adara into her free arm. The baby was a warm, comforting weight.

“I’m a mum,” Jemma said.

“What?”

“I…I might have been…I was on another planet, and I know that’s hard to believe, but Fitz found me and…we have a daughter. She’s not even a month old.” Adara’s legs kicked, and she turned her head into Jemma’s chest, making small grumping noises. “She’s so beautiful.”

“And she’s hungry,” Fitz said, carefully freeing Jemma’s breast so Adara could latch on.

“Is that him? He’s Scottish?” Jemma’s mum said, sounding faintly alarmed. Jemma rolled her eyes. It was good to know some things never changed.

“He saved me.” The rush of her milk letting down with everything else she already was feeling was almost too much. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “It’s hard, getting used to things again.”

“Oh, love, I know.” Her mother’s voice softened. “It’s okay. You do what you can. Do you want to talk to your father?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

There was a moment of silence as the phone was passed over. “Hi, honey.”

“Dad—”

“Don’t talk, Jemma, I just wanted to say I love you. And I’m proud of you. You’re smart enough to survive anything. And I can’t wait to see this granddaughter of mine.”

“SHIELD…there’s a place in Perthshire, a house. Um, after quarantine.”

“We’ll visit when you’re ready. And let me give you our mobile numbers.”

“Can I send a picture?”

“I’d love you to.” He gave her his number, and Fitz wrote it down. After a whispered good-bye, she ended the call. Her body ached liked she’d just run a marathon.

Fitz sent her parents a picture of him, Jemma, and Adara that Mack had taken. The immediate response was how grown up Jemma looked, and that Adara was the cutest baby ever, and that Fitz was not what they were expecting.

“What were they expecting?” he groused, scratching his chin.

Jemma managed a weak laugh. “I don’t know. And I’m sorry everything is so hard for me.”

“I’m having trouble too. This planet is too loud. Sometimes I hear wind that’s not blowing, and I wake up from nightmare after nightmare where you and Adara didn’t reach the portal.”

“Fitz!” She turned towards him. “You haven’t said—” Frustration clawed at her. She’d had no idea.

“I know it can’t be as bad as what you’re dealing with.” He nuzzled her hair. “And I always feel better when I wake up and you and Adara are right there.”

His words made her chest warm. “It helps me too, you being right beside me. And Fitz, there so much for us to work on. I have years of reading to catch up on, and I need to organize my data and start postulating—"

Fitz kissed her, his hand cradling Adara’s head, and Jemma sighed against his lips as she relaxed into him.

He tasted of the mints Daisy kept slipping him, and his breath tickled her face as he spoke. “We’re going to be okay, Jems. Soon.”

She hoped so. Hoped that someday she could wash all the dust of Maveth off.


	10. As Long As You Love Me

Fitz smiled at Jemma as her head lolled to the side. She’d been so nervous about flying and had only agreed to take the Quinjet to their new home when she’d found out May would be the pilot. Adara was asleep as well, in a sling around Jemma, and both mother and daughter looked peaceful. Jemma had nursed the baby through takeoff. Adara had fussed a little before dozing. Jemma had fussed too, with the straps of the seat, and how her legs were placed, before drifting off.

He ran a hand over his face.

Quarantine had been underground in a secure SHIELD facility. Flying in a bloody tin can and having to trust it to safely get his family to their new home, where they wouldn’t be underground, had Fitz shaking. He undid his straps and stood, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. Or anything to do.

Mack unbuckled himself from the copilot’s chair and sauntered back to where Fitz was standing. “Everything okay?” Mack asked in a soft voice.

“I’m not much of a fan of flying.” Fitz crossed his arms, trapping his hands under them to hide their trembling.

“I got that.” Mack glanced over at Jemma and lowered his voice. “What I don’t get is what the hell happened on that planet. I read the debriefings from you and Jemma, but all I really know is that my friend disappeared into a rock and came back looking like a mountain man with a pregnant girlfriend, and…and weeks later, I don’t know if he’s still my friend or not.”

Fitz looked up sharply. “Sorry,” he muttered. He hadn’t made time to talk to Mack. He hadn’t even thought about how he hadn’t. Not when Jemma and Adara had needed him. “And thank you for everything. For getting us back. For getting me back.”

“You should never have been on Maveth in the first place. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this when you were fine where you were.”

Fitz’s back went rigid. “Jemma was there. Might still be there if…” He clenched his jaw tight.

“Fitz—”

“Adara wouldn’t exist at all, are you saying my daughter—”

“Turbo,” Mack broke in. “You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to reconcile my nerdy Halo partner with the guy pouring blood and fighting alien monsters to make sure the people he loves are safe. Who went from absolutely certain he’d be alone forever to being part of a couple that everyone refers to by a single name. And I know exactly how long you were on Maveth, Fitz. Adara was born at full term. You and Jemma didn’t take too long to figure things out.”

Fitz’s cheeks heated. “We did…click nearly right away. And there was a week of not, er, clicking. I thought her interest was based on me being the first person to show up on Maveth. I had to get over myself.” Had he ever believed Jemma hadn’t known her own heart? He’d been an idiot.

“I don’t think that’s Jemma at all.” Mack chuckled.

“It’s not.” Fitz’s gaze slid over to his sleeping wife and child. “I wouldn’t ever stop her if she thought she’d be happier with someone else.” His gut twisted at the thought, even if he no longer believed she was about to leave him in the lurch.

Mack shook his head. “Jemma isn’t going anywhere. Have you heard yourselves talk? Especially about something science related. It’s this lightning speed back and forth with half-finished sentences that nobody else can follow, and I seriously don’t even think you two realize you’re doing it. And when Jemma was debriefing and trying to describe some concept to her interviewer, who’s a top-level SHIELD agent within Sci-Ops, Jemma kept getting frustrated and rolling her eyes. And she looks at you with the biggest heart-eyes. Well, almost as big as the ones you watch her with.”

“I love her.”

“That’s obvious. Wish you two could have met in a different way.”

Fitz did too. The might-have-beens were endless. “SHIELD tried to recruit her. We would have been at the Academy together. I wonder if we would have got on, or if she would have even given me a second look.”

Mack smiled. “You two are meant to be together. But…”

“But what?”

“But I miss gaming with you. There’s an Xbox at your new place as a housewarming present from me. Thought we could still meet up online.”

Fitz held his hands up like he was holding a controller. His fingers remembered the feel. “I think I’d like that.”

Adara whined and kicked, and Jemma woke up immediately, her eyes wildly scanning the cabin of the Quinjet until they landed on Fitz. Jemma relaxed and soothed the baby.

Fitz took a step towards them, but Mack caught his arm and leaned in. “Hey,” he said very softly. “If you’re worried about affording a ring, don’t be. You just let me know.”

“Okay.” Fitz frowned. “Thank you.”

He hadn’t even thought about marriage. He and Jemma hadn’t needed words to define their relationship on Maveth. They just _were_. Calling her his girlfriend sounded silly after everything they’d been through. Fiancée, even wife, didn’t begin to cover it.

No words could define how he felt about Jemma.

He thought he’d like to have that word—wife--so that other people wouldn’t be left wondering where he and Jemma stood in relation to each other. But a few words and signing a piece of paper wouldn’t change anything between them. It wasn’t their fault the world didn’t have the language to understand.

“I think she wants her daddy,” Jemma said as she removed a grumpy looking Adara from the sling. Fitz hurled himself across the space to sit beside Jemma. She set the baby in his arms, and Adara’s grunts disappeared as she snuggled her head into the space between his shoulder and neck. She smelled sweet and milky, a soft, warm weight against him, anchoring Fitz firmly into the present.

Jemma leaned against his other shoulder and yawned.

Fitz put his arm around her. He didn’t need words, just his family.

Mack smiled at him and flashed a thumbs up.

Fitz returned the gesture. 

He’d forgotten how good of a friend Mack could be.

****

Jemma sat on her new front step, watching the heads of bright pink roses nod in the early evening breeze. The field across from the cottage was a green blur beyond the flowers. Mack and May had said their goodbyes and taken off in the jet an hour ago, which had left them with Fitz’s mum.

She’d driven down from Glasgow to help set up the house, having refused to leave the furnishing and grocery shopping to “those American spies” as she called them. The house was gorgeous, full of everything Jemma, Fitz, and Adara would need. It was all that Jemma had dreamed of while cold and alone in a dusty cave. It hardly felt real.

Her parents would drive up for a reunion, which equal parts thrilled and terrified her. She simply wasn’t the same girl anymore.

It’d taken a lot of therapy the past couple of weeks for Jemma to admit that.

Adara was curled up against her breast, valiantly trying to stay awake. She’d been the best baby since their arrival, not crying at all, only gently fussing when she needed to be fed or changed. Fitz’s mum had been captivated, and Jemma had very much enjoyed the wealth of stories his mum had told about him as a baby. Fitz had appeared less enamored with the tales about how much he’d spit up and that his favorite baby food had been squished peas.

With a last hug, Fitz helped his mum into her car. She waved as she drove off, and Jemma raised a hand in farewell.

The noise around her grew. Frogs croaking, insects chirping. The wind amid the new spring leaves. She fancied she could hear the grass growing up through the soil.

It was all quite a lot.

Gathering Adara up, Jemma bolted to her feet and inside the house. She ended up in the living room. The big window that had seemed so lovely during the day as it let in the sunlight now forced her wildly pounding heart into her throat. Darkness pressed against the glass. Anything could come out of the night.

Like a bug, jaws gnashing. She could hear the sound of the window shattering as the monster drove through it to rip her child from her arms. The scar on Jemma’s belly burned, and she ran for the hallway. She pressed her back against the wall, breathing hard.

Fitz found her there a few minutes later. “What’s wrong?”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “Nothing, I’m being a ninny. We’re perfectly safe.” Arms locked around her daughter, Jemma slid down the wall until her rear was on the floor. Fitz sat beside her, and she peeked at him from under her lashes. He mostly looked smug. Irritation flared in her. “What are you smiling about?”

“It’s the windows, isn’t it?”

She nodded sharply. “Hiding in my hallway was not how I imagined my first night in my new place going.”

Fitz’s face became serious. “It’s okay, Jems.”

“It’s not.” It didn’t feel okay. She was an explorer. Coming back to Earth was supposed to be a triumph. “I should be braver than this.”

“I’m not,” he said. “And you shouldn’t need to put a brave face on in your own home.” The smile was back at the corners of his mouth. “I should probably mention that I freaked out about the windows back on the base, and our therapist helped me get the ball rolling on a solution. He wanted me to wait to show you, in case you didn’t need them.”

“What’s ‘them’?” Jemma shifted Adara slightly in her arms. The baby had fallen fast asleep and was like a sack of potatoes. Weighed about as much, too. She envied her daughter's ability to sleep peacefully.

Fitz stood. “Come see.” She took his hand, strong and warm, and he easily pulled her to her feet, even with her holding a sleepy sack of potatoes.

Her pulse started jackhammering as she stood before the large picture window, with outside growing ever darker. She’d have run again if Fitz wasn’t a calming presence next to her, his shoulder brushing hers. He took his mobile out, unlocked it, and pushed a few buttons. With a soft whirr and some clanking, a metal shutter descended over the window. It quickly blocked out the view, leaving her looking at a reflection of herself, Fitz, and Adara.

“Ta-Da!” Fitz said, beaming. “And they’re military-grade. They’ll withstand a direct grenade hit or category five hurricane winds.”

“Neither of which should be a problem in Scotland.”

“I bloody hope not.”

“But more likely than bugs.”

“I bloody hope so.”

She glanced at his reflection in the window, loving how happy he looked as he pressed a few more keys on his mobile. “Thank you.” The panic drained out of her. It was a little like being at home in her cave, only with real furniture and flush toilets.

“I feel better already. And they’re on every window. And the doors too, if we need them. On windows that open, there’s an emergency release button. I’m sending you the material specifications now.”

Her mobile chimed. “Did you include the temperatures used to—”

“Of course.” He grinned. She couldn’t imagine loving someone more.

Jemma reached for him, her fingers finding his cardigan. Something crinkled in his pocket. She spun to face him. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

Jemma rolled her eyes but couldn’t help the thrill that raced through her. From his pocket, she tugged a Kit-Kat bar in its bright and shiny orange wrapper.

“Oh, Fitz,” she breathed.

“I wanted to share one in our new house.”

“I love you.”

“And I love you.” He took the sweet from her and tore the wrapper. “But you’re only getting half this time.”

Jemma leaned towards him. “I’ve got something I’ve been waiting to tell you,” she whispered in his ear.

“What?” He snapped the bar in two.

“I’ve gotten the all okay on us resuming…things.” She straightened up, chewing her lip as Fitz’s eyes widened, then darkened.

He handed two of the sticks of chocolate to her and shoved the other two in his mouth. “Want to have sex on a real bed?” he asked around the chocolate bar as she shifted Adara slightly. The baby would be asleep for several hours, until her one o’clock feeding, which gave them plenty of time.

Fitz had never looked better than in a cardigan with smudges of chocolate on his lips.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She took a bite of her half of the bar, chewing slowly. Life was sweet and meant to be savored.

****

_Several Months Later_

The ground was hard under Fitz’s back, but above him, the blue sky stretch from horizon to horizon. A few puffy clouds meandered across the sky like lazy sheep. From the corner of his eye, he could see the leafy green tops of the trees that bordered the park.

His hip was warm from how Jemma sat beside him, curled up and absently humming a pop song—something about numbers, or at least one—as she concentrated on the article she was reading. He couldn’t see her, however, as most of his field of vision was taken up by a grinning Adara. She sat on his chest, mostly on her own, though his hands were around her sturdy little body to keep her from falling, giggling at everything. Including him as he made faces at her.

She waved the stuffed pig clutched in her hand at him, and he stuck his tongue out at her and briefly crossed his eyes. Adara erupted in giggles.

“If you’re not careful,” Jemma said. “Your face will freeze like that.”

“Mummy is not telling the truth,” Fitz told Adara. “She knows better. She’s a biologist.”

He patted around until he found Jemma’s blouse and tugged. She set the journal aside with a rustle and lay down beside him on their picnic blanket, much to Adara’s amusement.

“We’re doing well, I think,” she murmured.

“We are.” They’d managed to pack a lunch and walk from their cottage to the park in town. Several other families were dotted over the soft grass, their voices indistinct in the summer breeze.

He turned his head, watching her profile as she stared into the sky. “It’s so far away,” she murmured. He didn’t need to ask what ‘it’ was. Maveth. “And I still feel like part of me is there.”

“I think part of us always will be,” he said.

“But now, here we are. Lying on the ground, where bu—where insects can crawl over us.” Her hand flapped as she shooed away a fly.

“I’m glad that’s the worst threat out here.” He turned his face towards the sky. “I’ll always be fighting those bugs. For you. For Adara.” His fingers trembled, even as he kept a secure hold on his daughter.

“And I’ll always be alone and waiting.” Her breathing hitched.

“Time will unravel some of it,” he said softly, wiggling until their shoulders were touching. “And maybe the sorrows can never be completely undone, but I have you, and I have our daughter, and I have more designs for extreme survival gear than I know what to do with.”

Jemma barked with laughter. “We keep coming up with more. And I’m fine with the challenges ahead. I know we’ll do great things together.”

“We have, we are, and we will.” He checked the time. “There’s still a while before we have to head back. I promised Mack I’d get online with him tonight.”

“Unlike last time, when you forgot because you were having sex with your girlfriend?”

Fitz turned his head towards her again. “I have a girlfriend?”

Jemma looked at him, a brow raised.

Steadying Adara with one hand while she busily chewed on her toy, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring that’d arrived in the post that morning. Mack had kept his word. “Whatever will I tell my fiancée?”

Jemma sat up, but Fitz didn’t move. Adara drooled onto his chest as he held the ring out to Jemma. “Will you marry me?”

“How can I say no to a man covered in baby drool?” She snatched the ring before he could think of a comeback and slipped it on.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Yes, Fitz.” She poked his side, and he squirmed, making Adara laugh. “You’re not still worried I’m going to discover there are other men on Earth and run off with them?”

“I don’t even know the bloke who thought that anymore.” That man had been left behind on Maveth’s sands.

“What if I still think you’re some figment of my imagination because you’re too impossibly handsome and sweet to be real?”

He snorted. “Can you hand your hallucination some napkins before your imaginary baby dribbles much more?”

Jemma set a stack of napkins in his hand, and he briskly rubbed his chest, then gently patted Adara dry. The napkins went back in the hamper as a large white butterfly, its wings edged in black, flapped in to sit on Adara’s toe. She went very still as she stared in wonder.

“It’s a butterfly,” Jemma said. “A kind of…bug.” He thought he could get to like the kind of bug that didn’t want to take his loved ones away.

The butterfly waved its wings, and its antenna twitched. Adara reached for it, but it took off into the air, sailing away on the afternoon breeze.

“Uh,” she said with as much solemnity as a baby could muster.

Fitz patted her back with one hand while the other took Jemma’s. She clutched him tight, their fingers interwoven.

“We’re home,” Jemma said.

Safely on planet Earth with those he loved, Fitz agreed. The word settled deep inside him. “Home.”

Adara laughed.


End file.
